Ars Heretica
by nolandsman
Summary: After overcoming all worldly obstacles, after conquering Hyrule and obtaining the Triforce, the Gerudo King of Thieves embarks with an unlikely companion on his grandest (and arguably most bizarre) journey yet: a mission to kill the gods themselves. (Non-canonical interpretation of Hyrulean mythos... and nearly everything else).
1. At the End of Our Endless Struggle

Hey friends! Thanks for reading what just might be the closest thing to a crackfic I've ever written (maybe a dark crackfic? I seriously have no idea where in my brain to file it, or where its premise came from). It's a bit of practice starting off in medias res, namely the final battle of Twilight Princess, so let's hit the ground running. (Oh, yeah, this shouldn't interfere with _Legacies and Bloodlines_ —that one is still going strong—it's just a shorter, fun project I started in between chapters.) I've taken more than a few liberties _grossly_ misinterpreting canon; if you can roll with it, that's cool, if not... that's cool too I guess. Whatever floats your boat. This is just meant to be a really weird, nonsensical but kinda fucked-up romp through the horrifying supernatural world of the Sacred Realm. Thanks again for reading!

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Ganondorf, like any proper Gerudo, could find beauty in nearly anything. It was a talent that ran in his blood; it was his mothers' voices, whispering literature into his ear; it was the rich tradition of poetry his people passed down to him before Hylian swords slit their throats and sent them voiceless into the dust. And this was poetry he saw before him now—wordless, filled with beauty and brimmed with imagery (if not a little too pedestrian for his taste).

That the princess should die by the sword of her own hero was nothing short of art. The boy had pined for her for so long, in so many ways and behind so many different faces, it only seemed natural—hilariously so—for their centuries-long liaison to end with so romantically penetrative an act.

But Ganondorf could not laugh, he could not voice his appreciation for the spectacle ( _his_ lungs, ultimately, had been the ones to feel the sting of the wound), but he got to see the boy's face up close as the realization of his own horrible mistake came over him. His pupils shrank so narrowly, his tears welled so sudden and so bright, his eyes seemed to be two pools of indistinguishable blue. His lip curled in an incipient cry, black shadows of anguish spread like fissures across the skin on his forehead, and as he pulled his sword from her chest—that burning, blasted instrument, thin as a penknife—a torrent of blood followed. The boy's hands shook as he withdrew his weapon, slowly, his whole body crushed in bewilderment at his own treachery. It must've been difficult, for a kid like that, who had no doubt been reassured his whole life of his own goodness, to suddenly find himself a regicide. Ultimately, he should've known better than to raise his sword against his princess, even if he had convinced himself it was for his own protection, or even her own good—but the gods had certainly not chosen him for his wisdom.

 _You can never save a woman from herself; only she can._ Even now, the judicious words of Ganondorf's many mothers echoed in his head. If only this horrified, shaking little waif had been raised by better women, perhaps he would not be paralyzed now, trembling at his own atrocity.

But it was this paralysis, this inadvertent treason that Ganondorf had anticipated. He would not have otherwise thrown himself into the mind of the Hyrulean princess—he would not have otherwise waded through all the mundanity, all the tragic meaninglessness of the entire library of her memories, endured her opposition and trapped her muscles within his own control. It was old magic, painful magic, a spell contrived and perfected by those ancestors of the Twili (who, perhaps due to an incurable culture-wide self-loathing, seemed to weave only the kind of incantation that discomforted or damaged its own wielder). Ganondorf would not have thought to possess the woman if he had not been so sure of the outcome.

As usual, his surety solidified into reality. Here he was, smiling from behind the princess' yellow eyes, drinking her agony and regret like invigorating wine. He couldn't have been more than two paces from the stupefied hero, well within arm's reach. The boy, now nothing more than a quivering green leaf, stepped back in mystified hesitation. It granted Ganondorf enough time to gather himself, to cast the princess' fading presence from his own mind permanently, and thrust an arm forward.

Though he could not see through the little hero's eyes, Ganondorf had no doubt it must have been a comical spectacle, despite the circumstances—a large, dark hand emerging from the possessed princess' wound, untouched by its blood, black-tipped fingers curling with strength. On the back of the hand, where its ligaments and veins flexed with effort, glowed the proof of its owner's potency, the guiding light that drew him from the princess' dying body and back into real air.

The white-gold triangle, burning with proximity to its missing parts, seared his skin and sent jolts of exhilarating agony up his arm, all the way to his rolling shoulder. It pulled him forward, steering his hand to the boy's thin, exposed throat. As his fingers wrapped around soft skin, the burning light of his own power seared his heart, filling his veins with pyretic strength. It had the intensity of loathing but the pleasure of affection, it was inexplicable, it was horrifying, it was _wonderful_ —and it always guided his hand with stunning accuracy. A bitter incantation on his lips, Ganondorf dug his fingers into the boy's neck, explosive buds of black magic blooming on the tip of each nail. Before the kid could raise his little toothpick of a sword, before he could even cry out in surprise, he flew across the throne room, limbs flailing, a flutter of helpless green. From his hand a streak of silver fell—his sword clamored to a halt just as he hit the wide body of a stone pillar. He slipped down the marble, painting a streak of blood across its white surface, and crumpled to the floor in silence.

Ganondorf stepped toward him, fully extricating himself from the swiftly cooling body of the princess. As he emerged from the last throes of her bitter pain, he heard the thump of her corpse fall behind him. Now fully in his own body, he could feel the gold in his blood burning every inch of him; it lit his face, his eyes, and the sardonic smile he could not help but let pass over his face.

"That was clever, was it not?" he said to the boy before him. He was not sure if the curled green leaf could hear him, quivering and twitching though it was. "And plucky, I will admit. Perhaps too much so. Gods above, it appears I have more wisdom and courage than the both of you." He laughed as he kicked the boy's cursed sword out of his way. He didn't deign to touch the blasted thing; it was, and always had been, a sword so attuned to its own conceited sense of justice it would burn any hand it did not choose for itself ( _a tool only one man can use is a poorly-made tool_ , said his mothers' voices in his head).

As expected—Ganondorf knew more than he'd like about the bothersome tenacity of heroes—the boy was not quite dead. He lay on his back, wide blue eyes locked on something far beyond the arched ceiling of the throne room, chest quivering and heaving with effort. His hat had fallen from his head and now soaked up the pool of blood that dripped from his tangle of blond hair. His lips quivered uselessly, as if dancing blindly around words he no longer had the strength to form.

Ganondorf reached down to grip the boy's bloody hair, twisting the slick locks through his fingers. He pulled him from the ground, ignoring the instinctive twist of resistance from him; despite his dire state of semi-consciousness, it appeared he had enough awareness of this turn of events to muster some opposition to it. If the kid felt even a fraction of the powerful, electric ache that jolted through Ganondorf's bones at the prospect of reuniting those ruthless triangles, he could not blame him for struggling. After all, the gods' gift to him was nothing more than a parasite in his soul, seeking to keep itself alive and active through him—and it knew its extraction was close. They all did.

To see the triumvirate of power in its full glory was indeed a rare privilege. It always did resist showing itself in its naked and vulnerable gold, preferring instead to hide within the flesh and spirit of others hardier than itself. Ganondorf knew the sacred shapes had a will of their own, but after everything he'd done, everything he'd worked for, after every impossible struggle he'd overcome, he knew it was a will he could subdue. He tightened his grip on the boy's hair and dragged him toward the princess' body, hand aching, lungs burning with light.

"You prattling, gutless, vulture-nosed little _bastard_."

It appeared Ganondorf was in the presence of another poet. One apparently not quite as skilled as himself, but with a pleasing spirit and a tuneful delivery. He turned to see the imp—oh, yes, he'd completely forgotten about her, that clever, dogged little witch—standing between the pillars that arced to the palace's sky terrace. She recovered her footing and swayed her injured head, legs shaking. She was a tiny shadow on an infinite grey sky, all evil-eyed glare and cat-toothed grimace, barely up to his knees, even with her headdress. It charmed him to no end to have been called _little_ by such a creature.

Delighted, he let the hero's bloodied hair slide through his fingers. The boy dropped to his feet with a tortured groan, limbs ignobly splayed about his shaking body. He stepped toward the imp, over the wheezing, shuddering little leaf of a man, and graced her with his handsomest smile. She bore her teeth, lifting herself from the ground, tiny feet hovering over the pock-marked floor. She spread her lithe arms, etched with the glowing blue of her people's long-repressed magic.

The imp's smile lit the air around her, shining against the spines and curves of the shadow that spun about her head. "You'll beg for death before I'm done with you," she hissed. Her voice echoed watery-clear, rippling through the potent aura of her people's oldest and most powerful treasure. Ganondorf had never seen the Fused Shadow in action, and he doubted it would impress him. But he was an open-minded man.

"I look forward to it." He drew his sword with a streak of white light. He would see if the collective power of the Twili people could withstand the Hyrulean sages' supreme instrument of execution.

"Cheeky, aren't you?" the creature growled, widening her evil smile. She reclined in the assurance of her own power, safe and natant in its billowing waves. They buoyed her body into the air, sparks of darkness ripping and deforming the space around her. Despite her diminutive size, despite her round face and large, shining eyes, she may have struck a lesser man as formidable.

It was not entirely due to caprice that Ganondorf decided to spare her. _Waste not, little one,_ his mothers had said. "And I will waste not _this_ little one," he replied aloud, raising his sword.

The imp's eyes widened at his cryptic words, her invincible smile cracked at its edges before the plates of stone shadow clicked into place over her tiny form.

For a second, the world stood eerily still. Then in a flash of incoherent shadow, massive, undulating pillars of darkness burst from her stone mask, rippling through the air, spreading tendrils like fingers. Ancient, defunct runes glowed in their jointless lengths, pulsating as the limbs stretched and curled. The monster that had burst from the Fused Shadow bulged with effort as an amorphous, molasses-like hand gripped a cracked pillar and pulled it through the archway into the palace's throne room.

Its power swept past Ganondorf like an invigorating wind, swelling under his cape, rushing through the hairs of his beard, and he could not suppress a smile. His throaty laugh echoed past his teeth to the creature's formless body—here was the fight he wanted, what he had expected when he'd stepped from his prison and back onto familiar ground. It was what the princess and her hero had failed to give him, and he rushed headlong into the tangle of formless appendages with a peculiar levity he had not felt in ages.

When he cut off the first billowing limb that came at him, he was not surprised to see two more replace it. Each time he hacked at one of those uncanny appendages, avoiding the bubbling flow of what was not quite blood, the remaining flesh (if it could be called flesh) retreated into the main body of the creature, only to burst out again twofold. The spiderish beast grew with each second, bulging outward like some disgusting, distended organ, spreading its black magic to every inch of the throne room. He would not give it long until it consumed the entire castle—which is why he supposed he ought to kill it before then. It _was_ , after all, his castle now.

"Take care to not step on your friends," he told it. He did not know if the imp inside the monster heard him, but he could guess, considering the way the titan's skinless form rippled with anger, the way the runes along its limbs pulsated and burned. Its large hands planted themselves far from the dead princess and her dying hero, fingers digging into the stone, grinding it to dust under her enormous weight.

She was certainly a beautiful thing. Ganondorf could not help but admire the fury with which she crushed solid rock beneath her, how her incomprehensible limbs seemed to swallow sound in a black, desperate bellow as they flailed through the air. Perhaps, even after all these years, the magic of the Interlopers still flowed through this ugly little devil. It certainly did not flow through her compatriots with the same intensity, but perhaps it was merely because they lacked the endurance to truly channel that ancient magic. Ganondorf could not imagine the kind of agony the tiny woman must feel, locked inside that malformed stone helmet. Though the magic of his own land was far from bloodless, it did not adhere to such damaging edicts as the Twili's. In his gut swelled a genuine admiration for the imp.

Ganondorf swiped away another surging, malformed arm. The light of his blade burned against the monster's flesh, illuminating the hissing outpour of black blood and steam from its wounds. His weapon's light blistered the pulpy skin, drove back its glowing runes to the main body of the beast—Ganondorf did not know what would happen if he let the thing touch him, but he knew he would rather not. So he kept the rippling tendrils at bay, paving a way forward toward that tiny stone temple atop the beast's head, where the little hands of the imp were no doubt quite busy, imbuing movement and violence into the monster's massive arms.

It did not take Ganondorf long to tire of the exchange (it did not take him long to tire of anything, which was particularly unfortunate because he seemed to spend the majority of his life locked away, twiddling his thumbs and plotting). He removed himself from the telegraphed trajectory of a swollen finger, and sliced it off. He lowered his body, leaning forward on one knee, twisting the ball of his back foot against the palace's lush, soiled carpet. He felt that familiar golden fire course through his blood, and he launched himself upward to the tiny mask of shadow and stone that housed the monster's will and heart. Sword-tip first, he aimed himself at the flat, rune-embossed forehead of the Fused Shadow. He turned the grip in his palms, narrowed one eye, cast out all other objects, all other targets but the glinting silver of the decorative serpent that wound around its forehead—

Light met stone and the Shadow gave way. His sword pierced through the shallow length of helmet, and out its top, between its decorative set of what could only be described as horns. In a series of gladdening cracks, the mask split open at the forehead, falling to either side of his still-progressing blade. It tumbled away in a blur of grey, and the light and shadow of its magic snuffed out almost instantly (amid Ganondorf's satisfaction rose a pang of shame—it appeared he had permanently disfigured what would've otherwise been a decent trophy).

The imp inside let out a scream, though he knew better than to assume it was one of agony. It was relief, it was the ecstasy at having such terrible magic removed from her, of having the burden of such a spell lifted from her tiny, sloping shoulders. As her mask fell away and the shadows around her dissipated into the thick, stormy air, her big eyes closed, her scream declined into a sigh, and her diminutive form curled back, landing softly on the the ground before him. The remnants of her helmet fell in pieces around her, still smoking from the force of Ganondorf's blow.

He regained his footing, inhaling the foul air the broken Shadow spat from the pocks in its rapidly decaying stone. The little imp lay unconscious before him, tiny shoulders rising and falling with exhaustion, forehead bleeding black from the nick of his blade. He sheathed his sword and stepped over her, taking care to not give in to the morbid but fascinating temptation to see if such a round head would pop like a grape.

Back to the hero he strode, back to the business of crushing the world under his feet. The boy lay exactly where Ganondorf had left him, still struggling to breathe, still staring at nothing. Around him lay craters of stone where the monster had balanced on those ineffable hand-feet of hers, but he had remained untouched by anything but harmless showers of dust. He did not seem to have noticed the conflict around him—or perhaps he was simply used to sights like a Gerudo god-king and a spindly shadow monster having a go at one another.

Ganondorf did not have the patience to sit around and wonder. He just bent down and again took the boy's hair in his hand. He dragged him back to the cold body of the princess and dropped him beside her, maybe a little too unceremoniously for such a grand occasion. He took a moment to look over the pitiable duo, at the two bloodstained bodies, one only slightly more aware than the other. The princess lay twisted on her back, mouth and empty eyes open slightly, skin grey and still stained with the marks of Ganondorf's shadow magic. The boy was hardly better, his own stare as vacant as hers—if not for the shaking, shallow rise of his chest, and the struggle of his hands to open and close mindlessly at his side (perhaps he had hit his head harder than Ganondorf had initially thought), he would've mistaken him for dead.

Dead or not, it didn't matter to him. When he knelt down to them, gripping the boy's left hand in his before reaching for the girl's right, the familiar gold agony rushed through his veins. The princess' wrist was cold and pulseless, but he could sense the dim, fading glow of the power still within her—the boy's light was already shuddering at the surface of his skin, waiting, almost eager to leave his body (Farore's curse had always been the most volatile of the three, flitting between well-meaning young men like a busy coquette).

The power inside Ganondorf told him what to do. He lifted the hands, one lifeless and pliant, the other still struggling weakly, and drew the light from them like one would draw a breath. From his palms to his shoulders he burned, and his own hands shook from the effort, but his heart was calm, his mind pure and clear. He tilted back his head and took in the godly breeze, reveling in the painful heat that radiated from the meeting point of their hands.

The affair was mercifully quick. A rising wind, an excruciating, lively scorching of his skin, then stillness. Two pale hands fell back to the ground when Ganondorf let go, flexing his own wrist and asking himself thoroughly if he felt any different. Besides the quietude in his blood, the significant and conspicuous lack of stinging fire in his veins, there seemed to be no change. He was still himself, so far.

He relaxed his hand, a little surprised he found himself in his right mind—if it had been right to begin with. He lifted his eyes toward the room's gaudy dais, raising his large, empty hand to block the light. There it rose, smaller than one would expect, and brighter than one would think reasonable. The power of the gods, mundane and stripped of its mysticism, waiting for him.

It made a sound as he approached—a high, almost impossible wail. He did not know if that was in innate property of its material, or if it was a noise of protest. Whether or not it was an unjust opposition to him (for he had earned this as well as any other might), he didn't listen to it. He just approached with unwavering steps toward its blinding glow. When he reached out a hand, a familiar burning sensation flickered across his skin—yes, this was his. This was his by all rights. He lay a finger on the topmost shape, the closest to his heart.

Images of nothing, of everything, flew past him, through him. Before his eyes flickered the vague, evasive sight of the gods themselves, a cavalcade of nonsense and brilliance. It was the creation of the world, and its end, all morphed into incomprehensible swirls of color. It was the history of the land written in grass and stone, it was every sadness and triumph of his people, it was the wrinkled eyes of his mothers, filled with wisdom, it was a princess on the eve of womanhood, it was a record of the Hyrulean Civil War, it was a great flood, it was the dream of a jeweled and starry whale, it was a moon falling—it was all things, all manner of impossibilities, and frankly (Ganondorf thought as he slowly regained his own sense of being), rather ludicrous.

"I see," was all he could muster.

Before him, the golden light faded into nothing, stretching itself against the air and disappearing into whatever pocket of existence in which it preferred to slumber. But it could not wander far from him, even if it desired to. He had a firm grasp of it now—he had a firm grasp of nearly everything.

Cupping his chin, he seated himself again on the throne of Hyrule. Far beyond the palace's battlements, beyond the barrier of twilight he had erected seemingly decades ago, the clouds of the storm retreated to the east. The shadows passed lightly, uncaring, over the faces of the two bodies before him, one pale and twitching in soporific agony (finally, only after being relieved of his godly burden, the boy managed to faint), the other grey and sunken. Ganondorf supposed he ought to get rid of the princess—despite her loveliness, her untouchable dignity and her divine power, she was a corpse like any other and would certainly start to stink up the place soon enough. He ought to get rid of the boy, too, if he knew what was good for him, but something held him back.

That something took the form of a tiny imp, twisted over her own stunted spine, red hair splayed about her like motionless fire. Ganondorf frowned, crossing an ankle over his knee and pulling thoughtfully at his beard.

She would not be pleased when she woke up.


	2. Even the Heavens may Fall

It was a lovely autumn day, and the entire world was leaking. Ganondorf could see it from the outdoor mezzanine leading to the throne room—the yellowed light that swathed the the clear air of the Hyrulean countryside, the pockets and beams of shadow that dampened the sun's healthy glow. The grassy knolls and wild orchards of the Lanayru landscape undulated in the distance as if through the warped air of a rising heat wave. Everything seemed to melt—all he could see were colors dripping into one another like wet paint on a canvas, blurred and misshapen.

It did not surprise Ganondorf to learn that there were some metaphysical consequences of his actions. Perhaps it was his destruction of the Fused Shadow that caused the outer reaches of the Twilight to wrap its tendrils around this world of its own accord. Perhaps the imp's homeland starved for her, and now reached out to pull her back into its valleys and canyons of shadow. Perhaps it was his newly-acquired Triforce throwing something of a fit—even after all its resistance to him, it glowed and pulsated with unused energy at the back of his mind like a bored child. Perhaps this bizarre fusion of lands was simply one of those mundane occurrences that only the indefatigable natural philosophers of the land could explain, and only after thousands of discarded theories and failed experiments. He would not concern himself with the science of the whole affair—even with all his knowledge, with the power of the gods themselves at his fingertips, he had little desire to investigate. The fate of this kingdom, _his_ kingdom now, he supposed, did not concern him. If the world fell apart around him, so be it. He had better things to attend to.

Out of the hazy blueish sky came a shape, grey and sharp-edged. Its vaguely spheric mass rotated in the sky, big as a carriage. It reached its zenith between Ganondorf and the sickly sun, and he examined its shadowy underside for a moment before it fell, hurdling toward him with unnerving velocity. Ganondorf did not avoid the projectile—he didn't need to. Well before it could come tumbling down on him, it hit the twilit shield that arced over the castle. A crack ran down its middle when it met the protective magic, and in two nearly perfect half-moons it fell apart, rolling down the sloping gold of twilit runes to the city below. Ganondorf folded his hands behind his back as the sound of stone crumbling faded to silence. He stepped forward and leaned over his decorated balcony, peering beyond the castle grounds to the edge of the magical barrier.

A group of soldiers, likely those who were off-duty at the time Ganondorf decided to waltz in and purge the castle of its residents, stood at the gates to the palace, waving their spears and shouting. They had scrounged up a trebuchet from somewhere, and now struggled to load a second boulder, clearly untroubled by the fate of the first. Earnest but ill-equipped (for when did a single ancient machine of war topple a castle wall, especially a wall of such potent magic?), they lay vain siege to their own castle, relaying orders and clearing the townsfolk out of the possible trajectories of their ammunition. They were pitiable, the lot of them, scrambling like insects down there, propelled by the useless hope that they could seize back their castle—and their princess.

Ganondorf almost wished they would break through his barrier. He almost wanted them to dispel the thick shell of magic around the castle, so they could rush in and find their princess gone, their monuments destroyed, their brethren slaughtered in the halls of the palace. It would've at least taught them a lesson about the futility of their efforts, but they would never pierce that barrier, not at least until Ganondorf let them. In truth, he could not bring himself to care so much about teaching the citizenry of the land a lesson. He simply could not be bothered.

He turned his back to the small gaggle of insurgents and sauntered to his throne room. Another boulder, smaller this time, burst in a shower of dust against the shining barrier behind him. He stepped over the sleeping imp (he had left her where she fell), and eased himself into his throne.

He had discarded the princess' body, as it had been of no use to him. It had been easy, surprisingly so—now that he had this new, delectable power at his fingertips, all he had done was wave his hand and wish her gone. He had merely rested his chin on his fist and glanced heavenward, and when he lowered his eyes she had disappeared, banished into some dimension of her own, where only the immortal hands of decay had to deal with her. After disposing of her, he had set a barrier over the hero's deeply sleeping body. He was fairly sure he didn't need to, given the kid was in no state to spring to his feet and cause trouble, but after the satisfaction of seeing the boulders crumble like clumps of dirt against the castle's twilit shield, he decided he quite liked the idea of impassable partitions. There was something satisfying, something inherently poetic about them. Besides, like all Gerudo, he never passed over an opportunity to secure his valuables. It was in his blood.

It was probably better for the kid anyway. As long as he lay under such a thick bell jar, he would not wake, he would not feel his injuries or remember the egregious crime he'd committed. Ganondorf was sure the last thing the poor bastard wanted to remember was running his princess through, and he had to wake up to do that.

Far from the throne, a third boulder crashed into the transparent barrier, cracking in half and rolling down its magical slope without leaving so much as a scratch. Ganondorf shook his head in disappointment, but he could not help but smile at the pleasant thump the impact had left shaking in his ears.

Apparently it had echoed equally as heartily for the young imp. Shortly after the impact, when the last remnants of the projectile tumbled down the slope of the barrier, she let out a light, soft groan. It was a small voice for a small creature, hoarse with effort and punctuated by little gasps of pain. She lifted her head, cracking open her eyes. Her face was half sunken, still pulled by gravity and sleepiness, like melting wax. The blood from her forehead had dried in a black streak between her eyes, terminating at her upper lip, just above her chipped stray fang. She stared at Ganondorf, gaze starting at the base of the throne and then rising slowly to his crossed legs, the glowing mark of his execution on his chest, his pleased smile, before settling on his eyes. She blinked slowly, mouth hanging open, before attempting to stand.

"You… low-down smug son of a bitch…" she croaked. She pushed herself onto all fours, oversized head bobbing, disheveled hair struggling and writhing like it had a will of its own. She managed to pull herself onto her tiny feet, shaking with exertion, and took a clumsy step toward him.

"Behold the princess," Ganondorf gibed. "She rises with such grace, such eloquence." He stood to greet her—it seemed only proper, since she seemed so enthusiastic to greet him in return.

She reached out a long, thin arm, a bead of light gathering at the tip of her pointed finger. "I'll kill you," she rasped, stumbling toward him.

His day had been good—better than expected, so he decided to grant her ego a bit of leniency. Instead of imploring her to try, instead of swiping aside what was no doubt a weak projectile spell and punting her across the room like the misfit little ball of stunted limbs she was, he let her think of herself as, if not a threat, at least an inconvenience to him.

"I would not advise that," he answered. His yellow eyes dropped to the carpet to his left, indicating what may have appeared to the imp to be some sort of glowing coffin. She lowered her hand, squinting at the thing, mouth curling in thought; Ganondorf could almost see her head clearing, cranking its shadowy gears. Suddenly her eyes widened, and she rushed on shaking legs toward the barrier, and the sleeping boy beneath it.

She threw her little hands against the twilit shell, twisting her fingers, muttering to herself. She could not dispel it with her own magic, she couldn't pry it open—there were no seams, no imperfections in its composition. She had nothing to exploit—skilled as she was in the arts of her people, Ganondorf was skilled in more.

"He'll be fine, you know," he said. The little imp raised her head, dark brow wrinkled in distress. "He will wake with a splitting headache and an acute sense of failure, but he will wake. He'll no doubt have a very sore left hand."

Her wet eyes widened, large and red as apples, and she stared at him in bewilderment for a fraction of a second. Ganondorf could see the thoughts flit this way and that in her round skull, behind her transparent eyes, as if she were trying to weigh her options. Then, inevitably, when the realization of his total victory came over her, she lowered her head. Her thin fingers slid off the sides of the small barrier and she slumped to her knees. She lay her forehead against its corner and stared at the boy inside, expressionless.

The little imp may have been defiant, but she was plainly no idiot. Unlike so many others Ganondorf had bested over the years, she knew her own defeat when it stared her in the face. Good. She was fast. She would be useful.

"You know I let him live for a reason," he said.

The look she gave him could've killed a lesser man. "Clearly—or did you just trip and accidentally belch out a preservation barrier?" She brushed her hand against the magic's glowing runes.

It seemed her spunk had recovered quite comfortably from that tragedy. Of course she was an adaptable woman—given all her kingdom's calamities and her own wayward misadventures, she'd have to be. Ganondorf crossed his arms and smiled. "I would watch that little tongue of yours, unless you want me to trip and accidentally drive my sword through him."

She bit her lip, holding back words, but appeared unable to do anything about her hateful grimace.

"I will give him back to you, unharmed, if you do me a favor."

She threw back her head and released a mirthless laugh. "What could you possibly ask from me? I have nothing you can't just _take_ , with that new toy you have at your disposal."

She was right, of course. But he had those sacred triangles tucked away for a different purpose. "I am king of this world now. I have no fear concerning my position. What makes you think I do not have room for benevolence?"

The imp shook her head. "Just another egoist. I should've known." She lifted her eyes, and he could see the beginnings of an evil smile color the edges of her lips. "Look, king of this world. I'm not interested in watching you wave your dick around. I'm not stupid enough to believe you, either, so save yourself some time and effort and just kill us."

"You require proof of my good intentions, I suppose," he said. "Midna—yes, don't look at me like that. I know all things Zant knew before I cast him from me. I know your name, your face and heart, and I know your true form. I am willing to give it back to you."

She stared at him in disbelief. Even as he raised his dark palm, retracting the magic he had allowed her traitorous advisor to use on her, even as he lifted the preternatural weight that kept her form rounded and small, she stared at him. When the shadows of her transformation fell over her face and her expression disappeared in an elongating pillar of black magic, he could feel her eyes on him. And when the darkness curled around her, swelling in a silk cloak across her shoulders and wrapping her body tightly, when the last lick of shadow swept from her face and settled into a decorative hood, her mouth still gaped in bewilderment.

She was a towering figure of curves, of bright orange hair and billowing robes, and when she emerged from the shadows cast by the imp's body, Ganondorf could not help but smile. As he had told himself many times before, he could certainly recognize true beauty when he saw it. Midna was not the mere pretty face and lithe body of an ordinary woman; her absurd height and too-long countenance, her wide-set eyes and unusual mien could be misconstrued as unappealing. But she carried herself with such an acute aura of awareness, of indefatigable _being_ , that she could've easily been mistaken for some sort of goddess of night. She was not merely a creature, as many of her subjects had been, she as something much more aware of itself—she reminded him of the statues of his homeland, thin-faced sorceresses of fire and darkness.

She narrowed her eyes at Ganondorf, searing him with their uncanny red light. "You seem to have forgotten one thing," she said.

Ganondorf had not forgotten. He'd merely kept that portion of her for himself, tucked it away safely in the lines of his own palms. One might say it was a remnant of his upbringing, that trait of acquisitiveness many people attributed to all Gerudo— _Never gamble on an empty wallet_ , one mother said. _Or on an empty stomach_ , said another.

"I will return your magic to you when I deem fit," he said. "It is foolish, don't you think, to arm one's own prisoner?"

"Truly worthy of that Triforce of wisdom, aren't you?" she spat. She crossed her long, elegant arms. She held herself perfectly well—it appeared she did not notice or care she had just grown ten times her previous height. "You already have him," she nodded to the sleeping hero. "And you…" Here, she hesitated a moment, Ganondorf noted. "And you've already killed Zelda. What makes you think I'd try anything funny?"

"Because I remember what you said to me before our little skirmish. Did you not say that even with that tiny body of yours, you would risk everything to deny me?"

That smile, bitter and wicked, crossed her pale face. "Only an idiot believes an imp."

Ganondorf could not suppress the laugh that leapt up his throat. "Yes, I suppose that was the mistake your friend in green made, wasn't it?"

Her smile vanished, her eyes narrowed.

"Now that you are no longer an imp, can he trust you? Can he count on you to release him?"

She seemed to think for a moment, to turn his words around and around behind those bright, incomprehensible eyes. "Yes."

"Then walk with me." As he stepped away from her, the weight of her magic still in his bones, she had no choice but to follow. She could not step too far away from those pulsations and ripples of darkness he had sequestered in his own body—she was a being of magic, _for_ magic, and abandoning her talent would constitute abandoning her existence (being a talented warlock himself, he knew that particular form of dread). So she fell into step behind him, treading lightly on her newly-regained feet, following her own magic like a mule following the proverbial dangling carrot.

Out on the balcony, it was easier to see the peaks of her world rising from the soil of Hyrule. The forests and hills dissolved into the sickly yellow of the Twilight's faint glow, smearing and swelling like an unpleasant hallucination.

"What is this?" she whispered. She stared over the landscape, at the blurred shapes of the distant mountains, of the knotted bridge curling over Lake Hylia, warped like molten metal.

"It is proof of our shared goal," he said. "No doubt the people in your own realm are witnessing something equally as bizarre."

"How does this concern you?" She side-eyed him. "If you want it to be different, ask your bloody Triforce."

"You are full of good ideas," he replied. "But I am saving that particular treasure for a much nobler reason." He crossed his hands behind his back and took a breath.

"Why would you have to save it at all?" she hissed. "It's the power of the gods, isn't it?"

"You should know that even the power of the gods is limited, Midna." He watched her expression closely. "When your ancestors tried to take that treasure from them, the gods could not annihilate them. They proved too strong, so banishment was their only recourse. Is this not what you learned as a child?"

A twitch of concern passed over her forehead. "How sweet. You _have_ been paying attention to our history."

"Like I said, I know everything Zant knew. And he knew everything there was to know about your people's records." He resumed staring out across the uncanny landscape. "And your records have said some interesting things about the splitting of light and shadow. This may be the first time the two kingdoms have touched in centuries."

"So what?" she growled. Her impassive face had broken into a concerned frown—she could not hide her worry behind that mask of indifference.

"Though this is not my doing, I can undo it. There's no telling what will happen to your people if the sunlight of Hyrule spills over into their world. If you behave, I will do my utmost to spare them." He could see her smooth jaw clench from the corner of his eye. "I did not think the princess of the Twilight Realm would cooperate with me over the life of a Hylian boy alone." The right side of his mouth upturned as he glanced at her. "Or am I wrong?"

She opened her lips, but a crashing noise came out, echoing around the mezzanine. Another boulder shattered against the barrier's impenetrable magic, splitting in a shower of shadow and dust. Ganondorf blinked, waiting for the cracking sounds to pass. Midna's eyes stayed fixed on his, unflinching at the bursts and crumbles of stone around her.

"It looks like we're under siege," she said, when the last patters of the tumbling gravel had faded.

"Indeed." He turned their attention to the small group of Hyrulean soldiers, markedly smaller than before (perhaps some had been smart enough to give up), still waving spears and shouting.

"Do they really think they're going to dispel this barrier with boulders?" Midna smirked. She seemed genuinely curious. It appeared she, like him, found the stupidity of the common man a source of unrelenting fascination.

"Hylians," he muttered. "Look at them. Stupid, brutish, no understanding of magic. At the first sign of abnormality they bring out their primitive instruments of war." His lip curled, and he couldn't help but scoff. "They have slaughtered each other for centuries, their own neighbors, their sisters to the west, and now like dumb animals they seek to kill us."

"Well, you _did_ murder their princess," Midna said. Her voice wavered, just slightly—a crack in her armor of emotionless monotone. Perhaps she had cared more for the woman than she dared to admit to him. But he could remedy that, in time.

"They should be grateful. What did she ever do for them but let a tyrant from another world invade their home, drive them from their own bodies, destroy their land—and then surrender and abandon them when they needed her most?"

Midna tilted her head—a telling admission. She could not deny the truth of his words.

"All she did was sit safely locked in her tower and wait for _him_ to do all the work."

Neither needed to mention his name. But Midna bit her lip, closing her eyes for a moment. "She saved me. She had a kind heart."

"A heart that is merely kind is a useless heart indeed. It may have felt for you, but it was feckless, unable to drive its owner to escape from her tower and actually help her people. That is worse than indifference." He saw a shadow pass across Midna's face, and recognized a particular wrinkle of doubt. "It was easily corrupted."

" _You_ corrupted it," she hissed.

"I did. But a better woman would've made it at least a little difficult for me. It was nearly effortless to bend her to my will." Like a green sprig between his fingers. "Such an easily corruptible heart is not fit to rule."

Midna's retort died in her throat. Her eyes fell to his chest, where the mark of his execution still glowed. "What about your heart, then?" she asked, quietly.

"My heart is pure as blackest night," he answered. "As is yours, wavering though it may be."

She sighed, as if suddenly weighed down by the effort of the conversation. "What do you want from me?" she asked.

If anything, Ganondorf was an honest man. Every Gerudo had a grain of honesty in their blood—it unquestionably took a certain truthfulness to live openly as a culture of thieves. So he followed his instinct and decided to mince no words.

"I want you to help me," he said. She raised an eyebrow, a little life returning to her enervated features. "I am going to enter the Mirror of Twilight and pass over your land to the Sacred Realm. You will clear the way for me."

Her smooth brow furrowed under her decorative headpiece. "So you want me to be your interdimensional doorstop?"

He couldn't help but smile at that. "Essentially." It was how he'd used Zant, too, riding him like a sleeping barnacle on a ship, through the Mirror, through the bars of his preternatural prison. And with the Door of Time gone, long decayed in the ruins of its temple far to the south, there was only one portal left between any two realms.

She crossed her arms thoughtfully. "For a man who just escaped the penitentiary, you seem to be quite eager to go back. How will you know I won't just shut the door on you?"

"Because if you do, you shut the door on him, too." His eyes flitted briefly back to the throne room, where the hero lay. "And if you start to act out, I will merely take you with me. I _do_ have your magic."

She grimaced at the truth of his statement. He knew it must've been embarrassing, painful even, for such a talented witch to have her power taken from her so easily. But she did not know Ganondorf, she did not know the potency of his own magic—she had merely had a taste of it when Zant used it to overthrow her. It must've been a bitter taste, but it was not even a fraction of the full meal.

"And what business do you have in the Sacred Realm?" she asked.

 _Hide not the truth_ , his mothers had said. "I am going to kill the gods."

Her gape of surprise spread into a cynical smile, and she tilted back her head, releasing a throaty, genuine laugh. "Oh… that's rich."

He admired the way her smile shone with a nearly invincible sardonicism. "Do you doubt me?" he asked.

Her chuckles quieted and she reached up to wipe a tear from her eye. "No. I don't. That's what I find so absurd."

"Then you will assist me. And when I am done, I will give you back your boy."

She looked him over—as if she were in a position to judge his veracity. He lent her that privilege, let her mull over the illusion of choice, let her scratch her chin at him and look him up and down with those narrow, wicked eyes. The both must've known she was in no position to bargain, no position to defy him. "I'll help you. But if anything happens to him, or my people, you will learn what I do to those who betray me."

Still a fiery little imp. "I've no intention of incurring your wrath," he said. With a smile he turned from her and stepped back toward his throne.

"I have one question," she said to his retreating cape. "Why? After all they've given you, why kill the gods?"

"You should know why as well as anyone, Midna." He stopped to eye her over his shoulder. She, like the Interlopers before her, had all the distinctive features of the peoples whom the gods had abused most—crimson, Sheikah eyes, orange hair that could have been cousin to the Gerudo, and the pale, bluish skin of those who had not seen the sun in centuries. If her blood remembered anything at all, it would remember to hate. "Your people were the ones the gods locked away in a realm of darkness for a crime their ancestors committed. You are the ones paying the price for their miscarriage of justice. And you are not indifferent to your peoples' suffering, are you? You know as well as I the bitterness and spite that gave them the will to survive in such a desolate world, that fed me until I was strong enough to return here. You know your history as well as anyone—you are aware of the agony and destruction the gods wreak when they dangle a treasure like the Triforce before mortal eyes. Do you know why they do that, why they promise the world to anyone who can scramble his way to their sacred treasure? Because they _want_ us to squabble over it. Your people merely did what the gods wanted, and they were punished for generations because of it. They were playthings—we all are. But most of all me, the princess, and your Hylian boy. They have made the three of us lock horns for their entertainment for centuries, perfectly content to sit back and watch us destroy each other over and over again. So, the real question, I suppose, is why _wouldn't_ I want to kill the gods?"

She blinked at him, mouth falling into a frown. Her eyebrows twitched as she took in the meaning of all he had said, of all that had remained unsaid, but eventually her smooth, impassive face returned. "And here I thought you were doing it for fun," she said.

"Oh, it will be fun, I assure you." Ganonorf crossed his arms. "But the fun is secondary. Primarily, it is because they deserve it." He watched her frowning face, her yellowed eyes widening in something between fright and intrigue. She was an intelligent woman, to be sure—his reasons would not be wasted on her. But he could still sense the lingering fear of heresy that all mortals, princesses or imps, had been fed their whole lives. "If you wish it, you may watch," he said. "If I were you, I would not waste such an opportunity."

Her eyes snapped up to meet his. Her face, though still tinged with dread, held a morbid curiosity in its subtle furrows and dimples. Perhaps he had sunk a hook into her after all.

His lip curled over his toothy grin. "Then let us go greet them at their doorstep."

"Fine." Her voice was enervated, unsure, but Ganondorf knew better than to think she was not more than willing to follow him there. "But don't be surprised if they don't welcome you with open arms."


	3. The Belly of the Sacred Wilderness

When Ganondorf stood on the very spot where he had died (or had undergone some perverted travesty of dying), a sort of disturbed nostalgia overtook him. The bitter, sandy vision of his own life, the lives of his mothers and sisters, passed through him with a stinging vibrancy. He could hear their voices in the wind, hear the guttural sounds of their songs and poetry, hear the swipes of their spears and scimitars through the empty air. He could feel their bones underfoot, feel the streams of their blood that ran deep beneath the white sand of the Gerudo desert.

"It's been a long time since I stood here on my own two feet," he said.

Midna raised her eyes to the moon, half concealed behind the Mirror's ornate frame. "Not so long for me." She clutched herself almost nervously—perhaps in the short period of their twilight-assisted travel, she had conceived a few regrets. Despite any reservations she might have about the situation, she knew as well as Ganondorf that he could blink on this side of the country and have a hero die, crushed under a twilit barrier, on the other. "You have to give me back my magic if you want me to open it for you." A black wind drove a shiver up her, shuddering her hair, her jewelry, the lengths of her lovely robes. "I hate this place."

"As would anyone," Ganondorf said. He ran one hand along the edge of the Mirror, still grasping Midna's magic in the other. "You have seen the echoes of what once happened in this place. Of the tortures and atrocities that were once committed here."

"I've been told the Gerudo have a merciless sense of justice."

He looked back at her, wondering if she referred to him now, preparing to exact revenge on the gods to satisfy his own sense of justice, or if she had simply forgotten her Hyrulean history. He supposed she had grown up in an entirely different realm and had probably never learned it in the first place—a forgivable offense. "You are mistaken. It was not my people who built this place. It was those well-meaning men from Lanayru, who tore down the sacred temple on these grounds and erected this monstrosity, seemingly because they had nowhere else to put the Gerudo survivors of the Civil War. And after they tried to murder me and threw me into that pit you call a home, I could still hear them, I could still see, bodiless though I was, through the veil of shadow into this land. I watched what was left of my people die by Hylian hands, have their villages and camps raided and their temples looted. I watched my closest allies waste away in this prison, I watched the rats grow fat on their bodies. And I watched their Hylian captors rebuild this country atop their corpses, all in the name of their goddesses of light and goodness." He almost smiled. "That is a part of Hyrulean history they don't teach anymore."

Midna remained silent. He knew she was familiar with such stories, that the texts and scrolls of her own people told a similar tale. As in any war, it was not only the soldiers who suffered by the hands of their enemies—certainly not so for the Gerudo fighters, who had seen their sisters and cousins (women so far from the conflict many had never even left their own camps and villages) burned for the crimes of strangers. And it was not only the Interlopers, but their families and children, those too weak or too young to have been a threat, that were banished, at the gods' will, to the wasteland of Twilight. "You are not complicit in the crimes of your fathers, Midna," he said. "And my daughters are not complicit in mine."

Midna unfolded her hands, expressionless. "Give me my magic," she said. Even after all his mercy, even with her long legs and elegant gait, she was still proving to be something of an imp. He figured he should be cautious with her, to keep her close by his side to ensure her cooperation, to always keep a new threat on his lips should she prove rebellious. But he knew she wouldn't dare impede him, unless she was content to sacrifice her sleeping hero. He doubted she would trade the boy's life to threaten his (her love for him was written so disappointingly clearly on her face), but the Twili were known to be an unpredictable bunch—Zant was proof enough of that.

Ganondorf relaxed the muscles in his hands, letting the darkness flow from his veins into the air. He felt a weight leave his arm and whip past his ear, toward the woman who stood behind him. He heard her sigh, long and vigorously—it was some mix of pleasure and relief, as her most precious weapon, the essence of her being, was returned to her. He glanced over his shoulder at her, now standing a little more confidently in her black robes, a defiant frown on her lips.

He half expected her to attack him, but she resisted him only with her expression. He saw black magic dance between her fingers, waving furiously at her side (of course, they both knew he could defeat her again if need be), but she grit her teeth and chose to save the life of the boy back in the castle than satisfy her desire for revenge.

"Before we throw ourselves to our deaths," she said, "if you die, does the barrier over Link dissolve?"

"If I die, the barrier stays," he answered. "And he dies a much worse death than I do. That alone should motivate you to ensure my success."

Midna sighed. It was a sore loser's sigh, heavy with the guilt of defeat. She stepped forward, raising her hand, extending a finger and breathing an incantation. Before him (the sight stirred memories better left undisturbed), the Mirror of Twilight awoke, wheel of white runes turning, hovering before the glass in twisting, ancient script.

Ganondorf swore he could hear an almost high-pitched squeal. The instrument was more machine than mirror, and the current of magic that flowed through its frame set his hair on end. He was not sure if it was an effect of his adverse experiences with the thing or because it successfully drowned out the comforting voices of his people he could hear in the wind.

It pulled at him, threatening to suck him into its endless tunnel of shadow, but he held himself steady, held his feet against the sand. Midna, a tangle of flapping, wind-tossed red hair and black robes, stepped toward the mirror, arms outstretched. "Well?" she said. The gale swept her voice into the mirror's twisting runes, and it died against the massive stone onto which they projected.

He took a breath, solidifying his destination in his mind. He would have no trouble stepping over the Twilight Realm now, with the gods' golden power in his hands, but he could tell Midna was quite sure he would merely end up in her world, back into the familiarity of her own palace. She did not believe in him.

He smiled and gripped her wrist, pulling her toward the mirror. Three steps it took—by the first, he was inside the darkness of the mirror's metaphysical pathways, by the second, he was through the Twilight (he could tell by the way the fresh, dark smell of that peculiar place passed him by), and the third, the fateful third set him down in the light-choked wastes of the Sacred Realm.

He recognized the smell, the sharp sting of the wind on his skin. He had been here before, though he could not remember it. Something in his blood awoke the moment he stepped into its energetic atmosphere, something ancient and furious. He took a deep breath to calm himself, and when he released it through his nose, he thought he saw smoke.

Midna appeared beside him, shielding her eyes from the light. She seemed to recoil in the white glow of the sky, shrinking into a thin, feeble mote against its infinite radiance, a shadow of a shadow. "I… I can't see anything," she hissed, as if in pain.

"Your eyes will adjust," he said, though he could not have told her how he knew that.

He waited patiently beside her as she slowly uncurled herself, regaining her composure and posture. He stared at the wilderness before them, squinting as the hills of the horizon appeared to him, swelling and falling like a moving landscape across the distant sky. The land stretched before him in infinite space and endless time, extending far beyond the mountains (if they could be called mountains) on the vast horizon. The scents and zephyrs of something not quite life danced around him, flittering past his head, materializing and redissolving into the boundless air.

"This is… the Sacred Realm?" Midna asked.

"Yes. Surely you've heard of it."

"Oh, sure," she said, straightening herself and taking a breath. "Only that people who enter here become beasts, or demons, or monsters. That if you stay here you go insane and dissolve into a disembodied spirit."

"It is not too far from the truth." He turned to smile at her. "So we will see what you become—beast, spirit, or otherwise."

"You too," she growled, and he laughed. He had a feeling about what he was to become, and it was much more than a mere demon.

As the sunless sky darkened, guided by a force that was not quite natural, not quite otherwise, Ganondorf could make out a glint of blue a few miles (or years) from where he stood. It undulated under the colorless, starless void, white lips of waves opening and closing with eager foam. He narrowed his eyes, his first destination solidifying in his mind.

"We must walk." He strode past her, and she pulled herself to her full height, more comfortable under the now-darkening sky. She started after him, bare feet navigating the strange grass below them like broken glass. He did not blame her for being cautious about the thin, light-emitting blades beneath her feet—any intelligent creature would shy away from any of the natives of the Sacred Realm. But Ganondorf knew the land well (though he could not remember ever learning it), and led her through the flat field of dying light, keeping his eyes trained on the far horizon, where the oscillating black hips of water met the open mouth of sky.

Midna struggled behind him, wheezing, feet unsure of their path. He supposed he could not blame her for her hesitancy—the air was thick, perhaps too thick for a Twili, the flora was unfamiliar, she did not know the lay of the land. But she kept up, stumbling every once in a while, following the path he tread in silence. He could almost hear the gears turning in her head as they walked, but he had no desire to ask her about them. She was probably planning, rationalizing a way to betray him, and he would rather not bother with that. She had proved herself an intelligent woman, who would know better than to bet the life of her love on besting a man who had already defeated her once—worse yet, now she was on his supernatural turf.

They were not yet to the edge of the distant waters when the last light of the formless sky disappeared. It was a sudden transition, unmarked by the passing of any sun overhead; when the darkness fell like rain, he heard Midna let out a breath of surprise. Even the glowing grass beneath them dimmed to black in an instant. They halted instinctively, nothing but impenetrable darkness in every direction.

Ganondorf drew his sword. Midna hovered closer to him, perhaps suspecting he had sensed some threat lurking just pass the wall of darkness. The sages' white blade illuminated the land around them for a few paces in each direction, glowing like a beacon. When Ganondorf thrust the sword into the ground, crossing his arms and seating himself beside it, Midna relaxed a little. She crept toward the light and knelt across from him, placing her hands on her knees and taking deep breaths of that terrible, thick air. After a few moments, her breathing slowed, and her chest ceased its desperate heaving.

"It is pointless to continue in this darkness," Ganondorf said. It was, of course, a lie, but she seemed to need a rest. A voice in the back of his head told him to leave her, that in time, as he strengthened himself in this world, he would not need her and he should just banish her back to Hyrule. But another voice (perhaps another one of his mothers'—they were numerous, infinitely wise but often in some disagreement with one another) told him that he needed her, if not only because he needed a witness. "You are tired," he said. "Rest. I will watch." Of course, he didn't need to, but he figured she might be more comfortable knowing he kept an eye on that empty black horizon.

Midna slithered to the ground, curling like a dog under the white light of the vertical blade. She looked almost impish again, so tiny and mortal—he might have guessed it was an effect of her surroundings. The Realm did not leave people unchanged; not a soul who'd crossed it could say they'd survived intact.

"Do not die," he said. "If you do not reopen the Mirror on our way out, I will not be able to release Link."

She lifted her head, eyes flashing at the sound of his name. But in a moment so pathetic it almost pained Ganondorf to watch, she lowered her head. "It's so hard to breathe," she whispered. She reclined and curled her pale fingers by her face.

"You will get used to it," he said. She would have to get used to many things—the hideous moisture of the lands they now crossed, the groping vines and sinister trees of the lands that would follow, the burning ache of the mountains in the distance. "It is merely the water in the air."

"You've been here before," she said. She turned her head to glance at him, eyes narrowed.

"Yes and no."

"What sort of answer is that?" The insolence took effort but she clearly prioritized it.

"I have been here, long ago, when I was not me. And I have seen myself traverse these plains time and time again, though each time is the first."

She propped herself up on her elbow, draping a hand across one comely hip. "Did you hit your head or something?" A hateful sneer played at the edge of her lips.

"No." He looked down at her from the bridge of his hooked nose. "I won."

She lowered her eyes to the ground, lush with soft grass, mulling over his words. "So, it's the Triforce that's messing with your head."

"It has shown me many things, things I could never have known otherwise. Though I hardly trust it to show me the real truth." He lifted his head and gazed into the impossible black sky. "It is, after all, an instrument of the gods."

"You know, for being so untrustworthy of that power, you sure seemed eager to get your greedy hands on it. Eager enough to use Zant to do it. Anyone with half a brain in his head wouldn't go near that creep."

Ganondorf's laugh echoed absurdly loudly in the absolute silence of the sacred night. "I _did_ desire it. With such ferocity and single-mindedness it now mortifies me to even think of it. But I was once a young man, ambitious and stupid." In fact, he had been that man—or at least resembled him—up until the moment his fingers had touched the golden triangles' smooth surface. Before then he would've contented himself with crushing Hyrule under his feet. Now, he had a nobler goal. "It must've been hundreds of years ago that I first heard it call to me. A blink of an eye, really, though perhaps not to you." He took a breath of that thick, almost nauseating air. "I had many misgivings about the Triforce. The most fatal was thinking it was was merely an object, without a will of its own. I know better now. I would've known sooner, if my own execution had not gotten in the way."

"Well, you can't blame anyone but yourself for that," Midna spat. "You tried to steal it, didn't you? I'd execute you too if you tried to take anything that powerful from my kingdom."

"On its own, the Triforce does not belong to anyone. It resided here, in the Sacred Realm, on its own land. It would not have been thievery to take it. It would merely have been trespassing." Midna tilted her head. "Back then, it lay beyond the sacred door of the Temple of Time, technically the property of the Hyrulean crown."

"So you were executed for trespassing?"

"No. I was executed for _nothing._ I did not even get that far. They put me to death because the princess at the time did not like me."

"What?" Midna had again lifted herself from the ground.

"It was a time of madness." He almost remembered it fondly. "After the Civil War, tensions were high. Neither the king nor the princess could abide me, even though it was through my exploits that they remained secure in their reign and not on the executioner's block of some pretender. But somehow they came to the conclusion I wanted to break through the Door of Time and steal a treasure they thought was theirs." He took a moment to smile. "They were correct, of course. That was my plan. Either the princess' mad visions had swayed her father, or they had captured and tortured one of my closest sisters. But they did not need proof of my intentions, they did not need a crime to try me for. I was foreign, I was a thief, it was a bloody period for the whole country. Stick any Gerudo before a council of Hylians and there is only one outcome of that trial. It was to be expected."

"Well, they had proof of your intentions," Midna said.

The dear woman, she gave the Hyrulean court too much credit. "Just the ramblings of a troubled little girl."

"I find that story unbelievable," she answered. "To be killed on the word of some kid, for something you hadn't done yet."

"It does not matter to me whether you believe it. It's the truth. At least… in this version of history."

She did not seem interested in his cryptic speech anymore. She just readjusted herself on the grass and waved her hand above her, casting a canopy of soporific shadow. Yellowish runes glowed in the haze, exuding such power Ganondorf could nearly smell them. They surrounded her like a protective, protean shell, sparking with violence.

"Just a precaution," Midna yawned. "In case you get any ideas about ravishing me in the night."

"Hah. I am not so cowardly a man as to have to resort to such indignities." He lifted his eyes to the sky once more, though he could see nothing in it. "Fear not. I still obey the laws of my homeland. And those laws are brutal, exacting and decidedly feminine. There is one crime they do not forgive."

"Well, who knew there _was_ honor among thieves?" She lay still for a while, as if mulling over the comment. "Ganondorf."

It was the second time she'd said his name, the first without the unrelenting heat of hatred. "What?"

"Spare the gods of my land."

"The gods of your land?"

"Yes. The gods of the Twili are few, and small, but they have watched over us through the night. After our banishment, they gave us light to see by, they gave us land to till. They have done no harm."

"Very well. There are only a few gods on my list, and yours aren't among them."

Within seconds of his assurance, her shadowy form fell silent, breath rising and releasing in calm waves. Ganondorf decided to let her rest while she still needed to—it would not be long before she would no longer need it. It would not be long before she would no longer need anything.

* * *

Midna's dreams were the quietest places inside her; free from the turmoil of waking emotion, the rooms of her own slumbering mind were wide, well-lit and stocked with knowledge. Her mother had once told her that magicians always dreamt lucidly, that a true wielder of the Interlopers' ancient magic would never waste an opportunity to meditate, to ruminate, to study. So Midna did not chase the whimsical shadows of her own dreams through veils of absurdity, as most people did while they slept—she did that enough in the waking world, if she were to be completely honest with herself.

This part of her was cold as icy water and twice as clear. Here, she could separate herself from the madness of the world, tear herself away from images of her failures and tragedies, look through the impartial glass of her sleeping psyche and truly assess her situation.

Here, her mind was not bogged down by images of Zelda, bloodied, on her back, of Link stuttering, wide-eyed, eyes widening in horror at his own actions. Here, she did not burn with rage at the thought of that twilit barrier over him, taunting her with reflections of his sleeping face. She didn't flinch at the memory of Ganondorf's sword piercing the Fused Shadow and nicking her forehead, didn't cringe at the absoluteness of her own defeat. She did not burn with hatred of the man, nor with hatred at herself for losing to him. Most of all, she did not reprimand herself for more often than not agreeing with his cryptic words, but only in the darkest parts of her mind.

Those dark parts were far from her now—all that was here was icy glass and clarity. And through that icy glass she could see the gods weaving the world as it was now, laying down the moving and cracking earth, sweeping across it in a wave of green life, retreating and spreading into the orderly blue sky, before disappearing in a thin, elongated triangle of light. She saw the rivers of the world, the lush plants at their edges, the spray of water's free fall; she saw the bare, red earth, weeds clinging to it for life; she saw white mountains and cloudless blue skies, sullied only with the black shadows of birds overhead.

And she knew, somehow, in some way, she needed to save the gods. She just didn't know how, or when, or even if she could—she knew that the water and ice around her told her there was no other way.

It was not a logical, or rational decision. It was simply a clear one. She may be helpless in her confusion, in her unfamiliarity with the events that seemed to unfold like a bad joke around her, but this seed of determination sank into her mind and stayed, unhindered by her emotional, logical thought. It was a decision unhindered by the needs of her spiritual and intellectual being—it seemed to come from another place altogether, a facet of her mind she could not reach. But she had an obligation to obey it.

 _Kill him. You have to kill him. Simper and agree to walk beside him if you must, but when he lets you out of his sight you have to turn against him._

 _What about Link_? The voice was her own—it had drifted in from some other part of herself, some remnant of her waking mind. _He will die if you kill Ganondorf. He will die if you save the gods._

 _I have to_ , she told herself, horrified by her own words. _I have to_. _I have to kill this man. I have to kill the man who took everything from me._

Suddenly the icy clarity felt not comforting, but stifling. This water, this resolution, seemed almost foreign to her. But her sleeping mind accepted that given where she was, in whose company she found herself, even the clearest of dreams would change in some way.

 _You will regret this,_ insisted her own distant voice.

 _I may. But I must do it._

With that, the waking part of her disappeared, back to the periphery of her mind, where it belonged. It could not trespass for long here, in the icy core of her being. It blinked and flickered out, retreating to another shadow of her being, where it would not bother her again with the needs and desires of the waking thing called Midna.

Shivering in the chilly the rooms of her mind, she suddenly felt like a stranger.

* * *

Thanks a bunch to those who left feedback (and to the loyal guest who is spamming this story: though you make some fair points in your latest reviews that I hope will be addressed in future chapters, I'm afraid I don't tolerate personal attacks and have removed your reviewing privileges because of it). In any case, thanks to those readers who have stuck with it this far!


	4. The Water that Drowned the World

Somewhere ahead of them, a colorful streak against the white grass, jutted a gnarled tree. It was a stark beacon against the endless, empty landscape, leaves glittering like jewels under the unbearable light of the sky. As they approached, Midna could make out the fronds curling from its center; she could see how each clump of leaves hung from its branch like a crystalline burden.

"Is that tree growing rupees?" she muttered to herself.

"Yes," Ganondorf answered anyway. "Though I wouldn't suggest touching it. Clearly it's a fable waiting to be written. Nayru is fond of such tales—I suspect she put it here because she knows we're coming. But she is a passive god, she rarely resorts to recourse beyond the vices of mortals."

Midna looked over the tree, at its glittering leaves and gold-brown trunk. "It's not growing very worthwhile ones," she said. "Just green? What a waste of a tree."

"Perhaps Nayru is unaware of the concept of inflation. Even when I was a poor thief, my sisters and I would not even bother with them. They are not worth their own weight."

Midna laughed bitterly. "If I found ten thousand green rupees I would not celebrate my sudden fortune—I would cry that I now had ten thousand rocks to lug around." Link had not shared her sentiment. But he had grown up poor—perhaps he settled for what money he could find. Even if he dug up the smallest green or blue jewel from the cracks in Castletown's cobblestone streets, he would take a small moment to celebrate. Midna had thought those moments terribly annoying, but thinking of them now, thinking of the smile on his face, beaming at the stupidest of accomplishments, made her stomach turn inside her. She shook off the feeling, raising her eye again to the absurd tree. "Go red or go home, is my motto."

"I would've thought a princess more ambitious than that," Ganondorf said. "Purple, at least."

Midna's hand remained on her stomach as they passed under the tree's glinting branches without giving it a second glance. "Better for me if it just grew fruit," she muttered.

Beyond the roots of the tree, a shallow pond glinted. It seemed harmless, moving in the white wind with the uncanny grasses, and it could not have been deeper than her ankles. "Are you hungry?" Ganondorf asked, stopping at the edge of the water.

"A little."

"The deeper you venture into this place, the less hunger you will feel. You will likely forget to need sleep, either."

She bit her lip, hand still resting on her exposed stomach. "Well, let's go, then. Nobody likes me when I'm hungry." She strode up to Ganondorf, stopping by him at the edge of the pool.

Instead of finding a way around it, as any other traveler might (if they _could;_ the more she stared at it, the more it gave the impression that it actually had no edge), he stepped into it, sinking up to his ankles. Steam billowed from the ripples as the water hissed around his feet. Midna gulped, extending one bare toe and flicking the surface, but she found it pleasantly cool. When she sank her feet into the pond, the edges of her robe floating behind her, it didn't burn or pain her. It felt like any other water.

As she slogged after him, a cool, opaque mist descended. She looked behind her, searching for the glint of the bejeweled tree, but she saw only steam and fog, billowing over the dull grey water. The mist had come between her and the infernal sky, which was a mercy, but she couldn't help but feel a tug of worry at her heart. She trotted after Ganondorf, falling into the steaming ripples of his large stride.

"She definitely knows we're here," Midna whispered. It was obvious enough to her now—they had entered Nayru's watery realm and she would be there to greet them.

"She does. If you see anything in the mist, do not follow it."

A shiver ran up her spine, and she followed him closely, comforting herself in the absurd heat radiating from his body. She wondered when he had started to burn like that—maybe after entering the Sacred Realm, maybe before, but she knew better than to question it. Like the other things she'd seen so far in this weird world, she doubted it would ever make sense to her.

The water around her feet seemed freezing in comparison. Her bluish toes curled each time they sank among the round stones on the bottom, and the long-stemmed plants that grew from the water resembled ice more than living buds. The water reminded her of the particular coldness of her dream the night before—though it was heavier, denser, than the familiar chill of her sleep. She wondered if her brain had sprung a leak of some sort. But whether her mind was pouring out into this water, or the wet chill of Nayru's land had dripped its way into her dreams, she didn't know. All she knew was that something was muddling her brain, and she'd have to carry on despite it.

"Hey," she started. Ganondorf grunted in acknowledgment but didn't turn. She didn't know if it was fear or curiosity that compelled her to continue. "If… the gods' existence created the world, won't their deaths end it?"

He stopped, steam billowing up past his wide shoulders. "Do you think the clouds wait for commands from Nayru to rain, do you think rivers would lose their course and get lost if she were not there to guide them? Do you think the earth would forget how to shake, the trees would forget to grow and the dunes would forget to move in the wind?" He glanced over at her before continuing his long stride into the water. "The world will do what it's always done. The cycles of life and death will continue as always."

She hesitated. "You seem a little too sure about that for me to believe you."

"What else is there for a world to do? It's not in its own interest to lay down and die when left to its own devices."

She wondered if the Triforce had told him as much, or if either of them could trust what could be seen in its smooth, golden glow. She wondered where it was now, if it was tucked away in his hand, in the same place where Link's and Zelda's had slept, if he kept it in his blood, or if it was in a different realm entirely, resting, waiting for him to command it. It still baffled her how he had not used it yet—or if he had, he had done so subtly, and probably to do things he could've done on his own. She figured it likely had a role to play in his ability to use the Mirror of Twilight to overstep her homeland and soar into this bizarre place, but for all she knew, it may have been a simple spell woven from his own mysterious Gerudo magic.

She just kept her silence, following him through the now shin-deep swamp, wrapping her robes tighter around her and steeling herself against the cold water. The unnatural heat radiating from Ganondorf's back provided her with some warmth, but the chill of the mist seemed to sink into her every bone, creeping through her hair and hood and making its way down the back of her neck to the base of her spine. She lifted her eyes to the mist, wondering if it indeed had some sort of mind, some ill intentions against her. She found her mouth open, almost insisting to the fog that she was on its side, that she would, if she could, protect its creator from the man before her. But grey shapes in the near distance caught her eye and killed her words in her throat. She stopped, staring at the flat shapes, the tall obelisks, the crumbling markers made of stone and wood. Letters decorated their sides and tops—the wings of the Hyrulean royal family's crest, symbols of devotion to the goddesses, crescent moons, the glowing moss of Zora monuments, an unnerving, teary eye, lashes spiking up from its lid like knives.

Ganondorf appeared beside her, heat radiating from him in unsettling waves. "What do you see?" he asked.

"Graves," she answered. "At least I think they are." She squinted at the slabs of stone jutting from the water, enveloped in mist. "They're sinking into the swamp."

He stared at them, narrowing his yellow eyes. "Stay away from them," he said, before turning and resuming his trek through the water.

Midna made to follow him, but in the tiny, unavoidable moment when she looked away from them, the graves seemed to shudder forward. When she glanced again, they were only a few paces from her, sinking and crumbling into the water. They suddenly flanked their path, forming an eerie wall to her left and right, and she could not help herself from releasing a surprised cry.

"Moved in on you too, have they?" Ganondorf asked. He ignored the lines of graves to his sides, and just continued on, slogging a little faster through the water. "Don't look at them."

"You… you aren't seeing what I am, are you?" she asked. She crept closer in his shadow, her arms retreating to her sides. She knew out of instinct that if she accidentally brushed one of these objects, it would be over for her. _Goddesses, do not do this to me. I mean you no harm_ , she pleaded in her head. But the graves did not listen—they just sank loudly into the water, faces alert and watching.

"No," he answered. "It is a property of this place. What you see and what I see will not necessarily coincide."

She shuddered, focusing her eyes on the golden markings on his cape. "What do you see?" she asked.

"In its barest essence, the same thing as you. I see the fruits of the Civil War." Midna could almost feel the grimace that must've crossed his face. "You are seeing the graves of these men and women because you did not know them, but I did. I see my sisters, my lovers, my daughters. I see my allies and enemies, men and women who I've watched die or who I've killed myself. Do not look, but closing in behind us are my mothers, and they are calling out to me. They are reaching for me, whispering to me to sink into the swamp with them and rest—" He stopped abruptly and Midna nearly bumped into him. The heat of his anger rolled off him in waves of steam. "See the depths to which Nayru will sink to intimidate me. What a lowly creature—not fit to call herself a goddess." He took a deep, loud breath and continued walking, fists at his side. "They are watching us closely. Do not stare at a grave too long, princess, or you will follow it into the water."

They were up to their knees now—the steam rolled up Ganondorf's legs thicker than the fog around them, and Midna stayed in its billowing mass. She waved her hands, guiding the steam around her, shielding her body and eyes from the infinite line of graves that flanked them. She thought she could hear muffled voices in the fog, the hoarse crying of old women, praying, begging for their child. She raised her hands to her ears and lowered her head, focusing on dragging herself through the thick water.

 _One foot. Okay, good. Then the other. Keep the voices out. One foot. Ignore the voices. Then the other..._ She repeated the mantra in her head for hours, praying with each step that her legs would find the strength to continue. It seemed a mountainous task, walking through this water, knowing just beyond the thick mantle of steam waited the eager casualties of a great war she had no part of.

 _I had nothing to do with it,_ she told the graves, the whispering voices around her. _He's the one you want, not me_. She knew they would not give into such a feeble plea, she knew they would not cease their eerie shuddering, their wails of crumbling rock. In a fit of doubt, she wondered why she had vowed in her sleep to protect a goddess that tortured her like this. She was not innocent, she knew this: she had come here with Ganondorf, she had given into his threats and demands, she now followed him through the swamp and into the belly of Nayru's domain. It would not impress the gods to know there was a sleeping boy under a barrier waiting for her back in Hyrule—for what did the life of an Ordish peasant mean, compared to the lives of the gods themselves? She just held her head, pleading, trying to strike a deal with whoever would listen— _If I save you, goddesses, save him. Please, save him._ But she had no answer from them, she had practically nothing with which to bargain with them, and no way of knowing they would even listen. They had said nothing, promised her nothing. She did not have their word like she had Ganondorf's, not that it meant anything. He was just as likely to backtrack on his promises as the gods, perhaps even more so. Midna just lowered her head and plodded onward, hands tight to her ears, eyes focused on the bubbling water in Ganondorf's wake.

She tried to think of all the possibilities where she might come out on top. Where she dissuaded him from his mission, where she defeated him by some unexpected turn of fate, where she returned victorious to Hyrule to find Link waiting for her, unscathed, a little confused, and with no memory of his defeat. Hell, if she played her cards right, she might find Zelda too, sitting on her throne with a curious look on her face. When Midna would stride up to her (both Hylians, of course, would be rendered speechless at the imp's regained beauty), and ask her what had become of Ganondorf, the princess would tilt her lovely, decorated head and whisper in that soft voice of hers: "Who?"

Midna barely noticed the water rising. She barely noticed the cover of fog disappear and the first light of the sunless sky peer through the shadows. She did not notice the graves shrink as the water deepened, sinking into the bed of rock and white dirt before disappearing entirely. It was not until she was up to her waist in glowing, cerulean water, body lit by the bright sky, that she noticed they had passed safely through the ghostly swamp. She raised her eyes and saw no end to the water around her, a deep, healthy blue and smelling of salt.

It appeared that somehow, by some trick of the Realm's irrational topography, they had walked into the ocean. Midna looked behind her for any sign of the swamp, any indication of the colorless reeds and stunted trees that had grown gnarled and ugly beyond the graves, but she could only see the surface of a vast ocean, endless in its blue glow. She glanced at her feet—the rocks and dirt had turned to flawless white sand, and darts of distorted light flitted around her ankles.

She'd never seen the ocean before—she'd seen _her_ ocean, the one that covered the lowlands of the Twilight Realm in eerie, poisonous darkness, but she had never seen such blue, such a massive body of clear, shining water. Even the grand Lake Hylia seemed a puddle compared to this. But how they were supposed to _go_ anywhere from here, that remained a mystery to her.

Ganondorf seemed unconcerned with the change in scenery. He just strode deeper into the water, away from the sand bar on which she now stood. Steam rose from his hips as he descended the steepening slope into the water. She followed him up to her elbows, coughing when the salty water splashed to her lips. She could not swim, but that wasn't a problem for her—if need be she could waste some magic and let it carry her across the surface. But Ganondorf seemed eager to plunge beneath it. She watched the water rise from his waist to his shoulders, and when the first part of his head disappeared under its shining surface, she called out to him. It was her luck the calm water had not covered his ears. He turned, mouth submerged, bubbles rising where the water boiled around him.

"I can't—" she started. The ripples in the water lapped at her forearms and ribs, and she knew she could not follow him past her shoulders. "Why…" She was about to ask him _why don't I just wait here_ , but the cold voice in her head told her she had to go with him.

He turned and slowly made his way back to her, walking through that thick water as if in a dream. His shoulders emerged from the surface in a cloud of steam, rising impossibly dry from its surface, and reached out a hand. Midna stared at the dark palm, hovering below the surface, distorted by its ripples. She glanced from the palm to the impassive face of its owner, at the steam and sizzling bubbles where his armor met the water.

"I need you to see what I'm going to do," he said.

She took a deep breath, suppressing her fears, and lay her palm in his. She had expected his skin to be scalding hot, but as his fingers wrapped around hers, they were nothing but pleasantly warm. They coaxed her deeper into the water, tugging her down as she lifted her face for her last breath, robe and hair billowing in the water. He walked on, heavy, determined, and his hand kept her from floating back to the surface, kept her feet on the sandy ocean bottom as she strode, cautious and breathless, behind him.

"Breathe," he told her. His voice came to her fast and deep through the water. She opened her mouth, gagging at the rush of salt down her throat. Her lungs burned and swelled at the thickness of the new medium, but when she exhaled, pushing out a burst of bubbles and saltwater, she discovered she had, miraculously, taken a breath.

She steadied herself and her own lungs as he led her deeper into the sea, down the long, sandy slope. The water did not seem to darken the further they descended—against all logic, it stayed clear and sunlit, and apart from a few bubbles of heat that boiled off of Ganondorf, completely still. There were no breezes of current to speak of, no life apart from the occasional sickly seaweed that poked motionless from the bottom.

Somewhere far above her, a tiny shadow bobbed on the surface, distorted by the sourceless, infinite light of the sky. It appeared to be a small boat, red edges glowing in the light. It did not move along the water, but floated aimlessly in the windless day. An object like that in this world might mean…

"Are there people who live here?" she asked. Her watery voice emerged thick and high from her mouth, surprising her with its intensity.

Ganondorf looked above him, spied the tiny fleck at the surface and smiled. "No. There aren't."

"Then what—"

"A flicker of a possibility, that's all." As if in response to his answer, the shadow of the boat disappeared in a puff of red smoke, and the surface of the water regained its limitless blue glow. "Look before you."

She lowered her eyes and nearly floated away. She gripped his hand to keep herself steady as the undersea landscape rose before them, just beyond the drop of the sandy ledge. Midna saw green fields, vast orchards, lakes and rivers, distant mountains—and most bewildering, the shape of a stone castle, rising above the streets and roofs of the town that surrounded it. It looked alarmingly like—

"This is the drowned world," Ganondorf said. He strode along the sandy shelf, toward its abrupt edge. "This is what Nayru has done to Hyrule."

"But… Hyrule is…"

"It does not matter what Hyrule is now. This is what it may be—what it _will_ be. This is what the gods will do to their land when things do not go to their satisfaction." He pulled her to the edge of the shelf, where the downward slope steepened abruptly. "They drowned every citizen too slow to make it to the mountaintops—nobles, peasants, devout worshippers begging for mercy as the waves came crashing down on them."

"You saw it happen?" Midna whispered. A stray bubble emerged from the corner of her mouth and gyrated its way upward.

"I did. And you're seeing it now." He surveyed the slope and the landscape below. "Beyond these plains is a trench. And at its bottom Nayru lies in wait. No doubt she is watching us as we speak."

Ganondorf tugged her closer to him and stepped from the ridge, pulling her from its semi-solid shelf and into empty water. She half expected to fall as she might fall through air—she supposed the sight of grass and trees beneath her may have triggered that thought—but they floated downward at an almost leisurely pace. Their cloaks billowed about them in the water like flags, waving their silent descent to the landscape below.

When Midna touched ground, the grass felt soft and dry beneath her feet. The trees around her stood tall and still, fruit hanging from their thick branches, and when she raised her eyes to the castle in the distance, she could hardly tell she was sitting at the bottom of an ocean.

No matter how her mind might insist otherwise, this _was_ Hyrule, though perhaps in a different time. Her heart ached to see the stillness of it all—there was no wind through the leaves of the orchards, no movement of clouds in the distance, no sign of animals or people. The castle itself appeared an eerie shadow of what it had once been, empty and lifeless, almost sterile under the distant, water-stained sky. She decided she did not like this place.

"Will we have to go through it?" she asked.

"We will have to traverse the fields. We need not go to the town."

"Good. This place gives me the creeps."

"As it should. Who's to tell how many drowned ghosts are wandering here."

The landscape was perfectly preserved. No signs of underwater life anywhere, no indication of decay. The trees and grass and stone fences of the fields lay untouched by creeping seaweed or any other creature—the lush prairies seemed to Midna to be eerily barren, disturbingly perfect in their stillness.

The journey through the drowned country was almost worse than their trek through the swamp. She could not see graves, couldn't hear the crying souls of those lives lost, but she could _feel_ them, hovering around her, floating in the silent water. She just kept her eyes on the ground, following Ganondorf's footsteps, wondering if praying to Nayru to spare Link was a good idea or not. If she could kill nearly every citizen of her own country, what would the life of a single young man mean to her? That is, if what Ganondorf told her was true, and this flooded world was not some trick, not some evil facade he conjured to deceive her. Midna clenched her fists at her sides and lowered her head in helplessness. She did not know what to make of it, but if she had to walk through this landscape to ensure Link's survival, she would.

They traversed the fields in silence, and before she knew it, before her usually quick-witted mind could come up with a plan to save her own life, save the gods and save Link, she found herself staring at the wide mouth of a black trench. The grass died abruptly at its edge, and its sides plunged into darkness, too steep to walk down. She looked to her left, then right, and saw no break in the massive depression—it seemed one eternal black strip of shadow. She gulped and dug her toes into the grass. It appeared as if they would have to jump.

"Are you ready?" Ganondorf asked.

"No," she answered.

"Of course you're not." He smiled and offered his hand to her once more. Reluctantly, she took it, and before she could prepare herself, they both stepped out into the dark water.


	5. Nayru

Hey, just wanted to thank everyone who stuck with the story thus far. Despite its strangeness it has been extremely fun to write! I would like to extend a warning, though, because this chapter contains some explicit violence. I don't really know if it's enough to necessitate an M rating (if you have thoughts on it one way or another let me know), but it is... pretty weird.

* * *

The darkness was absolute. Midna did not know how long she'd been falling, floating down to the depths of the Sacred Realm's endless ocean. All she could feel was Ganondorf's heat beside her, and even when she lifted her head in the hopes of seeing distant light above her, she was met only with crushing blackness.

She should've felt at home. After all, she had lived and breathed in shadow her whole life—it was her oldest friend, her greatest resource, her most powerful asset. It was the magic that flowed through her, black as the blood in her veins. But this darkness was different; it was thick and oppressive, not flitting whimsically as darkness was supposed to.

"Look below."

It was the first thing Ganondorf had said in what seemed like hours. Midna glanced beneath her (or at least, what she thought was beneath, she could've been floating upside down for all she could see), and made out a faint blue glow. It was a comforting sight in that it was a _sight_ at all, and she oriented herself toward it, never failing to let go of Ganondorf's hand.

"Quite the lure," he said, as they floated toward it. It grew in size and intensity as they sank closer, but its shape did not make itself clear until they had hit the bottom. Ganondorf landed feet-first on the rocky ocean floor, Midna not so much. When she flailed (slowly, awkwardly, as one does in water) to her feet, she could make out the shape of the light before her. It was a sinister, sharp blue, pulsating like a living thing. It reached her eyes in jagged waves, and when she squinted she could make out the arced shape of something that appeared to be the mouth of a cave.

Ganondorf walked toward it, slow under the pressurized thickness of the water, and Midna followed, heart beating frantically against her ribcage. Just beyond the flickering light, beyond the bends in the throat of this cave, Nayru lay in wait. Midna did not know what she would do then, when the goddess made herself known—it seemed the clever imp inside her, who always had an answer, who always had a plan, had packed her bags and left. She had never felt stupider, never felt more fearful for the near future.

But if anything, Midna was not a coward. She just followed Ganondorf through the glowing mouth of the cave, through its bends and turns, until something strange, something entirely unexpected, pulsed past her ear. It echoed through the mouth of the cave and into the darkness, and Midna slowed, straining her ears to hear.

It was music. Bright, percussive notes rolled through the tunnel in quick succession, and Midna could not stop herself from marveling at their beauty. She was familiar with the ditties of Hyrule and the slow, amelodic songs of her own people, but she'd never heard anything like this. It was otherworldly (as any music in this strange land should be) and unnerving—it slowed her steps and sent shivers running up her spine.

Ganondorf wore a smile that flickered and waned in the watery blue light, undeterred and evidently unimpressed by the music. He trod onward, Midna in tow, until the tunnel terminated in a rocky wall. Above them, a small circle of light rippled and shone. Ganondorf lifted his eyes to the surface, frown widening.

"I will go first. No doubt she is ready to welcome us." The music could've told Midna as much, but she said nothing. She just watched as he kicked from the rocky bottom and rose, a rush of dark cloak and fiery hair. When he burst from the surface, his body disappearing into the glow, the music stopped. Midna crouched—she'd expected a commotion the moment Ganondorf broke through that disk of light, but when she heard nothing, she struggled upward, kicking off the bottom and throwing herself to the surface.

Midna could not have expected the feeling of her first breath of air after so many hours of breathing water, but she knew she never wanted to feel it again. The water rushed from her lungs in a spray of thick droplets, and she gasped, sucking in the cold, harsh air almost by accident. It felt empty, it burned her, it threw her into a fit of coughing that she knew utterly ruined whatever glorified entrance Ganondorf had planned to make for himself. She was almost embarrassed to raise her eyes, but she did anyway.

A cave arced around her, walls curved with the many formations of dripping water. From somewhere (she could not tell where), a blue light lit the scene, reflecting from clear crystals, slippery stalactites, empty white shells the size of her own throne back in the Twilight. Among all these natural treasures, in a chair of salt and seashells, hovered the goddess Nayru.

She did not look like her depictions—those versions of Nayru that Hylians had carved into their statues, painted with oil on canvas, described in poetry, did not resemble this woman in the least. A pair of long, smooth, almost fishlike legs were crossed before her, ankles decorated with the jewels of scales, toes elongated and webbed. From her torso sprouted four thin arms, one pair above the other, two long hands still hovering on the body of a fishbone harp. From behind the strings Midna could see a narrow head with an almost human face, a thin nose, ears like fins and a head of thick, hairlike seaweed. Below her sparkling, scaled headpiece sat a pair of wide-set blue eyes, large and haunting. Her pupils shone like a reptile's, elongated and wet, and when they caught sight of Midna, her large lips spread in a smile.

"You have brought a witness with you," she said. Her voice did not seem to echo through the air so much as slither through it. She reminded Midna of a Zora, though no one in their right mind could possibly mistake her for one. There was something unnatural about her, something cold and dangerous.

"I did," Ganondorf answered.

Nayru set aside her harp with one pair of arms and crossed the other over her flat, scaled chest. "She is a talented magician."

Midna did not know what to say to that, if anything. She could couldn't very well correct a goddess—even though she knew her magic was worthless without the Fused Shadow—just a fraction of what it used to be.

"She is, though she doesn't acknowledge it."

Midna could not help scrunching her face in embarrassment. Here she was, coughing out the water she had breathed during her journey through a drowned kingdom, listening to a goddess and a deicidal usurper compliment her on something her mother used to praise her for when she was barely out of the womb. The absurdity of her situation threatened to hit her full force, so she struggled to her feet, telling herself to focus on what was in front of her, to not give in to the temptation to step back and think, really _think_ about this whole debacle.

Nayru rose from her chair of shells and seaweed, floating upward as if in water, and Midna could see the full length of her unearthly, eellike body. "Well then," she started in that chilling, gurgling voice, "she might pose something of a challenge for you."

A cold, illogical feeling possessed Midna. Her body numbed, compelled by something other than herself. She stepped from behind Ganondorf, her legs moving wholly of their own accord, and she slinked toward Nayru, eyes unfocused, mind blurred. She was not quite aware of her own muscles, not sure of her own intentions. All she knew is that the freezing feeling that washed over her was the same one that had invaded her dreams—it was the impetus that moved her, the reason she now put herself between Nayru and Ganondorf.

The latter merely stood with his arms crossed, smiling cynically. "You have gotten to her, have you?" he asked.

"You let her dream. And when a woman dreams of water, she dreams of me." Nayru slithered over to Midna, lay two freezing hands on each shoulder, and squeezed lightly. Icy helplessness spread from the touch, coaxing a small gasp from her. "I am water, and water is the lifeblood of the world—she is wise enough to know this. You are not. So she will teach you."

Nayru shoved Midna toward him, and without really knowing it, without explicitly telling herself to, she summoned a sphere of shadow. She flicked her wrist and threw it his way, and he stepped aside, unflinching as it hit the cave's far wall, crumbling the stone and bursting into flecks of darkness. She twisted her body, sidestepping and whipping a hand his direction, sending a wall of twilit runes his way. It smashed through mounds of wet stones and dripping stalactites, hurdling toward him in a shower of water and broken rock. He raised his sheathed sword and widened his stance, betraying only the slightest discomfort when the wall of magic hit him.

Midna did not know how she should feel—if she _could_ feel. For the most part, her mind and face were numbed and empty, showing no hint of expression as her body hurled disks of magic at Ganondorf. He sidestepped and swiped at them, blade still resting in its scabbard, cape whirling in the stale wet air. He twisted his body with astounding speed for a man his size, well out of the way of her projectiles, and she backed up, fists summoning another attack. Somewhere behind her, she could almost feel Nayru pull at strings, as if she had decided now was suddenly the time to play harp. But she could not hear any music over the sound of her own panting, the ringing of black magic in her ears. With each spell, stinging pain surged through her blood, sharpening her vision and searing the edges of her mind. She was not unused to it—in fact, she'd always found it invigorating, refreshing. But now, when she tossed spell after spell his way, with no concern for her own safety and comfort, the pain that shocked through every muscle sparked something other than liveliness in her.

Ultimately it was this pain, she realized with a harrowing jolt, that let her feel the strings that held her, the knots of will that pulled at her muscles and mind. She did not recognize the stinging in her blood, it was not her own willpower that condemned her to it.

Ganondorf must've seen her eyes widen with her own realization as she reached up a hand to launch another incantation his way. He lowered his body and sprang toward both her and Nayru, cape twisting, mouth spreading in a determined smile. He raised his sword, drawing it from its sheath in a blur of white light. Midna told herself to dance out of the way of his blade, to flee from its reach as any sane person would, but the strings of Nayru held her in place. She grit her teeth and narrowed her eyes at the barrier of twilight that spread from her fingers, rapidly unfolding like some sort of translucent, nonsensical map. He just hurdled toward her, sword-tip first, and she grimaced, preparing herself to feel that blade, first through her barrier, than through her—

But Ganondorf hurled himself above her, pushing off the ground on one muscular leg. Midna could feel the waves of heat roll off him as he hurdled toward Nayru—toward one of her arms, long blue fingers outstretched and plucking soundlessly. Before the goddess could slither herself behind the shield Midna busily erected, Ganondorf's sword fell in a flash of white, cutting through her wrist. The goddess' hand fell from its arm in a spray of blue blood, fingers still twitching deliberately.

Nayru's icy hold on Midna relented. She turned toward the fishlike goddess, sudden anger rising in her chest. The sting of betrayal tight in her throat, Midna lifted her arm and from its end rose a massive shadow, five-fingered and glowing with runes.

She was still not sure who to attack. She could throw her magic at Ganondorf once more, of her own free will, and save the woman who had used her like a puppet regardless if it meant her death, who had threatened her safety and took her autonomy from her. She could try to save Nayru, and be left begging her to spare Link's life, or she could hedge her bets with a man who had killed the princess of Hyrule, who had imprisoned Link and who now sought to undo the very makers of the world. She had never been between such a hard rock and a rocky hard place.

She swept toward the goddess, who now had removed herself from the path of Ganondorf's sword, twisting with eely slickness through the air. Her wrist had stopped bleeding, and something now poked from its end, wiggling, almost taunting her opponent. Midna drew closer, shadow fingers hovering over her own, and noticed with a jolt of nausea that it was another hand—two hands, in fact, growing obscenely rapidly from Nayru's slimy wound.

The goddess just slithered backward, safely away from the strikes of sword and magic, and lifted her injured arm. Two hands sprung fully-formed from her shining wrist, long-nailed fingers wiggling wildly. With a sickening crack and slurping of wet flesh, her arm split down its middle, separating in a wave of blue blood into two distinct appendages. She smiled coyly, waving them over with her five arms, floating leisurely on her bed of thick wet air. She twisted her thin body as Ganondorf's sword flashed by, lithe arms rotating about her. In her lower left she still clutched her harp, and one of the newest hands reached over to pluck, her evil smile widening.

But Midna came down from above, massive black hand falling hard and wide like a rapid dusk. It smashed in to Nayru and flattened itself to the ground of the cave, shaking stone and water. All went silent for a short, intolerable second, and Midna's eyes widened. She prepared to accept the possibility that she had just won the battle when a harsh, bitter sound sprang from the goddess' harp. A terrible surge of power pulsed through Midna's shadow hand and into her real one, up her arm and to her pained lungs. She could not cry out as she flew backward, limbs flailing, into the opposite wall of the cave. She hit the wet rocks with an agonizing crack, and she slumped to the floor, shadow hand dissipating into nothing. She rocked her head, trying to coax back some sense into it, ignoring the trickles of water or blood that rolled down her forehead.

On the far side of the cave, aglow in that sourceless blue light, she could see Nayru dodge another blow, pivoting her slick body like a fish through water. Midna squinted, trying to make out the blur of her arms, trying to make sense of the sounds that emerged from her terrible instrument, but she could not clear her vision. She pulled herself onto her hands and knees, head aching, black blood dripping down her chin. Her eyes closed, her vision darkened, and she hung her head, listening. For a moment she thought she was drifting away, but another watery cry from Nayru grounded her in the moment, so she lifted her head and focused her attention on the goddess.

She could not count the number of Nayru's flailing arms. She could not see the precise movement of her body, couldn't quite make out the vibrations of her white strings. All she knew is that she needed to stop her, somehow. She pushed herself onto one knee, summoning a whip of shadow. A jolt of pain made its way up her arm as she took hold of it, shaking her upright and back into full consciousness. Midna stepped forward, and with a quick, powerful swing of her arm, the length of darkness extended across the cave, casting a quick shadow over the bumps and spikes of the rock formations. It was almost as if in a dream, watching that whip slowly curl toward the goddess—Midna ached for its success each fraction of a second it moved, wishing that Nayru would not notice it, wouldn't turn and with one strike of a harp string banish it back into the air.

Its end, too slowly, reached the goddess. She and her many flailing arms, distracted sufficiently by Ganondorf's supernaturally quick blade of light, did not turn or react when the barbed end of the darkness unfurled behind them. With a satisfying pang of energy up Midna's arm, her whip wrapped around three or four of the numerous wrists of the goddess. She planted her bare foot against a rock on the cave's floor and pulled with all her might, straining her pained arm, gripping her shadow soundly in hand and mind.

The goddess flew back, harp dropping from one of her many hands, the shadow's barbs tightening around her arms. Ganondorf, never a man to waste an opportunity, flung himself forward, swinging his blade with both hands at Nayru's exposed head, right beneath her slack jaw. With a sickening sound, the blade sliced through her neck.

The goddess' head lingered atop her shoulders for a second, in stillness and silence. But as the first rivulets of blue blood began to flow from the wound, the head slid back, and with a foul, sticky sound, it fell from her neck. It bounced once on the stone floor before rolling to a stop by her feet, eyes wide, forked tongue twitching from her open mouth. The body stayed upright, shivering, arms convulsing uselessly at its side.

Midna stepped forward, withdrawing her whip back into herself. Her legs still shook, her vision remained blurry, her mind opaque with the flurry of a million conflicting thoughts. Her heart still beat furiously in her chest, pumping the remnants of panic and confusing to every part of her. She panted, stumbling toward Ganondorf and the still-standing body, unsure of what to say—or what to feel or think, for that matter.

Ganondorf flicked the blue blood from his sword and returned it to its sheath. The worldly scraping of metal against leather restored some sanity to Midna's mind—but only just enough for her to notice something strange happening to Nayru's newest injury.

Buds of flesh, twitching and slimy, started to rise from her neck. After the display with her dismembered hands, Midna should have expected as much, but when she stepped forward to warn Ganondorf, she could only stutter in surprise.

He did not seem too concerned Nayru was regrowing her head. He just set his sword aside, watching the slithering, twitching knobs of flesh squirm atop her neck as if they had minds of their own. Ganondorf just lifted his hand, slowly, deliberately, and started to mutter to himself. Midna did not know what he was doing—she stepped again, legs shaking, reaching out to him. When Nayru's new heads sprouted big black eyes, wide-set and bulging like a fish's, Ganondorf's hand began to glow. He raised it to Nayru's exposed chest, ignoring the furious twitch of her arms, the cracking and slurping sounds of her new heads.

Midna stood frozen in her tracks as white light burst from his hand, all three triangles on its back lit bright as suns. He plunged it, fingers stiff and pointed, into the chest of the goddess. Her body squirmed mindlessly in protest, and her new heads, just barely having developed mouths, let out wet, high screeches. Ganondorf just grit his teeth and pushed his Triforce-lit hand deeper, muscles of his jaw flexing in effort. Midna could see steam rise where he touched the watery body of the goddess, and the smell of burning flesh, not quite human, not quite fish, permeated the air. She clutched at her chest, trying to hold in the sickness that threatened to burst to the surface.

Then, with a cry of either triumph or agony, Ganondorf ripped Nayru's heart from her chest. It spurted blue blood, struggling and squirming in his palm like a living creature. He closed his hand around it, squeezing, golden light rising from between his fingers. With each second the light brightened, the burning smell grew stronger, and the heads of Nayru screeched with increasing intensity. Then, with a burst of blood and a sound Midna knew she'd never quite banish from her ears, the heart collapsed under his grip. It spurt blue and fell apart in his hand, and the goddess' body finally collapsed to the ground, thin and motionless.

Midna stood still for a second, mouth agape, heart fluttering somewhere in her throat. She could not take her eyes off of Ganondorf's hand, off that fading golden light, off the disfigured pile of flesh that had once been the heart of the goddess. When she got her breath back, she raised a hand to her forehead and stared in disbelief.

"Holy shit," she whispered. "You just killed Nayru."

Ganondorf dropped the heart and wiped his hand on the nearest wet flowstone. "Don't give me all the credit." Below him the goddess' body rapidly deteriorated, collapsing into flickers of light and fading into the air. She started to get the feeling it was not a body at all, but she did not exactly have the energy to contemplate the metaphysics of it. She'd just witnessed a goddess die. She blinked, waiting to wake up.

Beside the disappearing body lay Nayru's fishbone harp, unharmed, white strings glowing in the light of its player's decay. Midna crept curiously forward, keeping her eyes on the instrument (if only so they didn't wander back to the corpse of the goddess). In Link's company she had grown quite used to discovering a reward or two after a long fight, so she instinctively reached out to it. But Ganondorf's hand arrived there first, gripping the lyre about the neck.

He pulled it up toward him, looking it over. Midna was about to ask what he thought they were supposed to do with it when he frowned. "I have no use for this," he said, and with one smooth motion cracked the instrument over his knee.

Not for the first time that day, a jolt of surprise pulsed through Midna. When he dropped the harp she strode up to its corpse, now nothing but useless, dead strings and scattered fishbone. She watched Ganondorf's back with disappointment as he turned from her, but she couldn't very well explain that bitterness. She couldn't exactly recount how she and Link had picked up seemingly random objects all the time only to have them turn out to be inexplicably (almost suspiciously) useful. So she just left the corpse of the harp by the corpse of its owner, and followed Ganondorf to the goddess' salt-formed chair, decorated with shells and scales and pearls. He ran his hands along its side, as if looking for something. She wondered if the Gerudo thief in him told him to steal as many jewels from it while he could, but he did not seem interested in the treasures decorating its surface.

"You did well," he said. "It seems even without the Fused Shadow you are a formidable witch."

"Well…" she looked down at her own fist. "I'm usually not this good. For some reason… maybe it's this whole Sacred Realm thing, but…" With a sort of snapping feeling in her head, the horror of her own actions departed from her. It exited her aching, terrified heart swiftly, leaving behind only the miracle of her own survival. When she looked up, a twinge of pride flashing at the edges of her smile. "I did pretty damn well. Except for the first part, but you can't say I didn't improve."

"Yes, well, just try not to fall asleep again. And if you do, don't dream of forests or fire. There's no telling if Nayru's sisters will just waltz into your mind and take it over like she did."

"That was kind of a bitchy move, I'll admit." The flurry of confidence born of her success had reached its peak, and she couldn't help but admit that she felt… somewhat accomplished. Not since she had been a surly, downtrodden teenager had she ever thought of exacting revenge against the gods. But damn, it did feel good to cut down that ugly fish who would so easily and heartlessly violate her free will like that.

 _What are you thinking, Midna? What the hell are you thinking?_ She quieted the voice inside her head with images of Link, sleeping under the twilit barrier. _If I have to do this for him, then I should get what reward out of it I can._ With a pang of guilt and terror, her conscience slid to the back of her mind and fell into deep silence.

Meanwhile, unconcerned with the inner turmoil of his captive ally, Ganondorf seemed to have found what he was looking for. He leaned on the throne's side, straightening his arms and pushing against it. Midna crossed her arms and watched him. "So… what are you doing? Aren't we going to just go out the way we came? Back through the ocean?"

"No," he grunted. "We must go farther into the Realm." Beneath him, the first cracks in the throne crawled along its side, and from them spurt generous sprays of saltwater. He took a moment to examine the misty jets. "Fear not about the state of the elements, Midna. It appears even without Nayru, water still flows."

Midna looked around her, at the tiny rivulets dripping down the walls, at the moist pools and the shining disk of water that led back into the vast ocean. She guessed it was probably a good sign that the water had not dried up the instant of her death. Though she could not be certain the same was true back in Hyrule.

With a crunch and crumbling of rock, Ganondorf pushed the throne from the wall. It fell away with a crack of protest, splitting against the cave's floor in a spray of salt and broken shells. To Midna's surprise, what lay behind it was not a damp tunnel or another wall of rock, but a bright, greenish light. It was not the dim, blue glow of the drowned kingdom, and it certainly was not a light that could shine in the darkest depths of Nayru's abyss. Midna stepped toward it, and a fresh, flower-scented breeze tickled her face. She crept through the small hole in the back of the cavern, shielding her eyes against the light.

A comforting, warm wind flew through her robes and hair, and she heard the rustling and gurgling of life far below her. Somewhere in the distance, the calm cry of birds and the eager hiss of waterfalls met her ears. She lowered her hand, and with a rush of elation and panic, found herself standing far above the green canopy of a vast forest.

Well, she could not say she would easily forget this trip.


	6. An Illusion in Green

It was a difficult feeling to explain. Ganondorf had never had the pleasure of fighting a god before. All in all it was a less dramatic experience than it had probably looked—at the moment it had been just like fighting a living, mortal thing—made difficult because of her skill and her magic, but made possible by the fact that whatever she was, she had still been made of something that resembled flesh. Despite her odd propensity for regrowth and the paralyzing twangs of that terrible harp, he had managed to end her life (or whatever it was that gave her muscles movement and her thoughts a voice).

It had been far more difficult than he had anticipated. Even with the power of the Triforce on his side, he had felt as vulnerable and inexperienced as he'd been as a young man during the War. Perhaps he should have anticipated it. Nayru had been one of the original three forgers of the blasted triangles—he would not expect them to turn on her easily. And they didn't, of course; it had taken every ounce of his being to plunge the golden power into her heaving chest and rip out her heart. But despite its reservations, he managed to force it to guide him to her core, to lend strength to him as he destroyed her.

 _What's the point of a knife that turns on its own wielder_? he thought, almost morosely, as he and Midna zig-zagged down the barren cliffside toward the verdant canopy below. _Perhaps I should have tried my hand at this before I ever acquired the thing._ No, he knew better than that. It had been the Triforce that allowed him to cross over to the Sacred Realm with such a weak artifact as the Mirror of Twilight. It had been that gold light that guided his feet, that let him soar over that dark prison of Midna's homeland with ease and put himself right at the front door of the gods. But it had also resisted him as he plunged his hand into Nayru's fishlike breast, burning his skin even as it lent his fingers the strength to rip out that bitter heart of hers.

It was turning out to be quite the tempestuous little thing. He supposed that was only natural, considering the caprice of its makers. He wondered with Nayru gone, if her particular contribution to the artifact would find itself less inclined to resist him. He would have to find out the next time he used it. For now, he focused on his own being, his own changing self.

Touching the Triforce had been the beginning—though the sorts of visions it sparked in his head could've changed any man, and not necessarily in the best way, they had affected him deeply. He'd had only a vague understanding of what he should do, but a clear sense of how to do it. He had explored Nayru's realm in his head before he'd even entered it, he'd recognized her face before he'd even seen it. It hadn't been more than a second after stepping foot in the Sacred Realm that the knowledge of her location and conduct appeared in his head seemingly out of nowhere.

He had not failed to notice the other changes in him. He did not know if it was the novelty of his situation, but he found himself a little less clear-headed than usual, a little wilder; however, at his core, he was still a patient and collected man, so his surges of emotion were not difficult to hide beneath his perpetual scowl. Of course, he could not so easily conceal the unnatural heat of his own body. He did not feel feverish, but it was impossible to ignore the bubbling and steaming of water when he touched it. After tearing out Nayru's heart, it had sizzled in his hand with a fascinating intensity, but during that moment he understood, briefly, why touching her would elicit that kind of response. The moment he crushed it in his hand, squeezing the last drop of life—or whatever it was gods had—from her, he understood that she did not belong to herself. She belonged to another god, an older god, far more sinister and far more powerful. And Ganondorf understood that he and she shared a history, though he could not quite grasp what it had been. All he knew was that she was the oldest and greatest, and the last on his list.

Just the thought of her set his blood boiling. He could not summon an image of her face, for he hadn't seen her even in his disjointed visions, but he knew that she was the true mother of the triumvirate. Though her three daughters had dangled that dangerous, godly power before the people of the world, destroying lives, unmaking and remaking Hyrule as they saw fit, it was _her_ that made it possible.

He did not know if she would fall as easily ( _easily_ was a dangerous term for him to use, he knew) as Nayru had. He may have the Triforce in his hands but he could not help but suspect it was a mere trinket compared to the powers she had at her disposal. Ultimately, it shouldn't matter to him. He may be just one man, but—

No, he wasn't just one man. Before him strode his captive, his comrade, the woman he had deceived into coming with him and opening the door for him to this realm. She had surprised him with her skill and tenacity; he had not expected her to be of use fighting a goddess. He knew he could've done it himself, but he also knew she had shortened the fight drastically—using magic she herself admitted was far less powerful than the Fused Shadow he'd bested in the Hyrulean throne room. Either there was something about her own witchcraft she wasn't telling him (and that she herself might not be aware of), or the Sacred Realm had changed her a little, too.

Now that he thought of it, she did seem different. There was an odd skip in her step, as if their success had returned some of that impish spunk to her—though, who _couldn't_ celebrate such an accomplishment as deicide? Perhaps she simply thought herself one step closer to returning to her world (though the condition of that world remained something of a mystery), and her Hylian boy. Either way, she held her head a little higher, and the smell of black magic that rolled off her shoulders had grown noticeably stronger. She seemed taller, too. Thinner, like her shadows had deepened somehow—but he could not tell if that was simply because they had just made their way into the shade of the dense forest.

Around them, the trees thickened, shuddering with life. Ferns and vines quivered in the breeze while leaves far above them whispered to one another, a sea of green under the sunless sky. The gurgling of water and the whistling of wind through feathers echoed between the trees, punctuated by the calls of birds and the rustling of animals around them. The path ahead was narrow and striped with gnarled bodies of wild roots, and to either side rose a thick wall of shadowy green.

"It goes without saying we stay on the path," Ganondorf said. A black moth flitted by his nose and he restrained himself from swatting it.

"Yeah, yeah. I've read enough hackneyed stories of heroes to know never to stray from a forest path." She flashed him a wicked look over her shoulder. "Plus, I'm not so eager to find out what kind of beasts are out there, stalking us."

"We will meet them if they come," Ganondorf said. They were now fully enveloped in the shadows of the forest. The sounds around them grew thicker and louder, the shuddering of leaves more violent. Perhaps Farore, like her sister, could sense them coming. He supposed it was hard to walk around wielding such power as the Triforce and not attract the notice of the Sacred Realm's many inhabitants.

"Farore is an unpredictable goddess," he told Midna, as they strode through the suspended, dim beams of green light trickling in from the forest canopy. "She is like her sister in that she may try to deceive you. Do not touch anything."

"You don't need to tell me twice. I've been to woods like this before in Faron."

"There's a reason the province is named after her. If you find yourself lost here or in her woods in Hyrule, there is no hope for you."

He thought he heard a small laugh from her. "For being such benevolent gods, they sure seem eager to trick us into killing ourselves."

"It is their nature. They are quick to deceive, and rather good at it." He kept his eyes on the path ahead, unwilling to slow his pace. "Take the Triforce, for instance. Only a fool would actually believe it grants wishes."

"Didn't you Gerudo have some form of that yourselves? Something about rubbing lamps and whatnot."

"That story has been misconstrued for many ages. I don't know what iterations you've heard, but there is a reason the discoverer of such spirits that grant wishes often do not live through it. The real function of those tales was to show our children that there is no such thing as acquisition without consequence. Even thieves know that."

"So what was the consequence of acquiring the Triforce?" she asked.

"The consequence is that we are here now."

She walked behind him in silence for a few minutes. The echo of birds and whispering leaves rang deafening in his ears, and when she spoke again, it was almost to his relief. "Wish-granting… when you think about it, it's the lowest form of bait there is. If the gods really wanted us to fight over something, of _course_ they would tell us it grants our wishes with no side effects."

"Now you've begun to understand." He had expected her to—she was an intelligent woman, swayed by evidence and not anecdote. No matter what she had been taught about the benevolence of the gods, that did not change the fact she was here now, in their Sacred Realm, witnessing their weirdness, their deception, and their deaths. "It _is_ obvious bait. And your ancestors took it. I did too, at one point in my life. Even the wisest among us cannot resist its pull." He crouched to avoid touching a hanging vine, preferring to leave the flora undisturbed.

"I can't help but wonder what she would've wished for," Midna muttered. Her voice was soft, suddenly regretful, and he was not sure if he was supposed to have heard her. It did not take him long to guess of whom she spoke.

"You mean the princess? What do think she would've wished for, had she been the victor?" The wobbling, nectar-spotted petals of a gargantuan flower appeared before him, dropping suddenly from the vines above. He slid around it, cursing the forest that grew thicker with each step.

Midna slinked easily through the gaps in its petals, eyes still lowered in thought. "She would've wished for peace. No doubt about it."

Ganondorf shook his head. "Of course she would've. She was in a position of power. Peace would've only secured that position and lengthened her reign."

"That wouldn't be the reason," Midna insisted.

"How about your Hylian boy? What would he have wished for?"

"The same, of course."

"I doubt it." Midna shot him a poisonous look as he sidestepped the probing fronds of a giant fern. She slid after him, bare toes gripping the slopes of rocks and rounded roots. "Think about it. What need has a hero for peace? He would have no purpose."

"Peace must be upheld," she said. "There would be plenty of things for him to do."

"Do you think the kind of peace granted by the Triforce would be so weak as to need upholding?"

She let out a frustrated sound, but whether it was at his answer, or at the sudden appearance of a cluster of groping vines, he couldn't tell. She just ducked, slipping past them and throwing a disk of black magic their way, slicing them through the middle. A glob of thick, bizarrely red blood gathered at the vines' severed ends, dripping onto the path behind them.

Ganondorf decided he quite liked this little game they had going. It staved off the monotony of the trek, at least. "And what would you ask for, dear Midna, if you had your hands on our wish-granting golden power?"

She answered too purposefully, too quickly. "The same thing as the others. Even if I knew the Triforce couldn't grant it, I would still wish for it."

"Why?"

This, to her, seemed a better question. She fell into silence for a long moment, ducking her head under a wayward branch. "Because I _should_ , that's why."

Ganondorf laughed. "Ah, but do you think the Triforce would know better than that? It would not give you what you think you _should_ want, it would give you what you _want_. So, what do you truly want?"

Again, that stubborn silence. She just bit her lip, slinking behind him like the tall shadow she was. He sensed a nervousness, an inability to accept the truth of her own desires. A feeling of derisive, almost angering pity washed over him, and he held back his breath, preferring to keep the smoke inside. For a moment, he was overwhelmed with the need to wrestle some sort of truth from her, to deliver some sort of mild punishment for making him feel such pity. He stopped abruptly and turned on her, holding a hand out to her shoulder to stop her from bumping into him. She looked up at him, wide-eyed, mouth open.

"It's him, isn't it?"

The way she lowered her face and pulled her mouth into a taut frown told him as much. He let go of her shoulder and shook his head, turning back to the path before them. He knew he could've taunted her, he could've dangled this over her red-tinged head for the entire journey to come, but he chose not to. The wave of anger passed, leaving only the slightest trace of smoke in his nostrils. "We cannot help what we desire," he said.

He could almost feel her silent thanks radiate from her. He figured he had no need to taunt her and incur her distrust now, not when they were so deep into Farore's sacred forest, no doubt with the beasts under her command closing in.

So they turned back to their path, walking in silence until the canopy closed so tightly over their heads there was barely a ray of light to see by. The noises of the forest grew ever louder, and Ganondorf walked with one hand on his glowing sword hilt, expecting a beast or two to scramble from the underbrush at any moment.

When they finally did come across one of those animals, after hours of walking in silence and darkness, it was not exactly what Ganondorf had expected. He halted abruptly, staring ahead at the motionless body that lay across their path. Its grey fur quivered in the thick air, legs splayed before it, and Ganondorf saw a pair of powerful jaws, opened slightly to reveal long, broken teeth. Midna crept up behind him and peered around his shoulder before letting out a small cry. She pushed past him, sprinting over roots, hurdling rocks, until she skidded to a halt in front of the animal. She fell to her knees and Ganondorf had to jump after her, fully preparing himself to forcefully remove her from what was no doubt some sort of trap.

He slowed beside her, almost reaching for the back of her hood to pull her from the animal. But she just knelt a few paces away, mouth open, eyes wide. The beast, its shape clearly that of a wolf, was most definitely dead. Something thick and black was splattered about its open mouth, caking the dried notches in its jagged teeth.

"It's him…" Midna whispered, certainly to herself.

Ganondorf took a closer look at the wolf's mouth and recognized the substance that covered it. "Twili blood," he murmured.

Midna held her head with long, pale fingers. "This is my fault," she said.

He glanced down at her, at the nonsensical anguish on her face, and wondered how deep she had fallen into the mental snare Farore had set for them. Her eyes seemed to be looking at something far beyond what lay before them now. "How so?" he asked quietly.

"I didn't… didn't tell him."

Ganondorf raised his eyes back to the wolf's body, a spark of recognition snapping into place. "Tell him what?"

"At first… I didn't tell him that those monsters… were my people." She pinched her forehead, mouth wrinkling at its edges. "He didn't know, and I just sat on his back while he killed all of them. Because they were in my way."

Ganondorf moved a little closer, daring to touch one of her shoulders. He was not sure if doing so would lure him into the same trap, but he seemed to be sound of mind even as he squeezed it (of course, _thinking_ oneself sound of mind meant less than nothing).

"When he found out, he cried for hours. I just watched him. I didn't cry for them. They were my people, and I didn't care."

A picture began to form in Ganondorf's head. He had seen the pitiable and almost despicably helpless people of the Twilight Realm bend and change, backs cracking, skulls elongating into hard shields of mindless bone. He had seen through Zant's eyes the transformation they had undergone. Though if he had been in his own body, not riding passively on Zant's ambitions, he would not have bothered to waste time going so far. He could not say the transformation from gentle idlers to mindless soldiers wasn't some sort of improvement, though he wasn't about to tell Midna that. _Hide not the truth_ , his mothers said disapprovingly in his ear.

"Blame Zant," he said to her.

He did not really expect the words to comfort her or bring her from the depths of that emotional trap. He was merely probing, testing the strength of its hold on Midna. But when he saw her face contort further, wrinkling in anger, he knew he may have just pushed her deeper.

"Zant did what he did because _you_ let him!" she snapped.

He withdrew his hand, thinking over his options. He composed a few words carefully in his head, and kept his voice quiet, subtle. "He did what he did because I could not stop him." It was only a partial lie—enough to satisfy maybe one mother but not the other. "Though he had my power, he retained his free will, unfortunately."

Midna raised her eyes to him, still narrowed with hate and sorrow.

"If I had complete control of him, he would not have ended up such a disappointment to me. There is a reason I did not save him when I could've."

"You were done with him," she muttered.

"It was because he deserved what he got. He was a groveling, loathsome little rat, and it pleased me to no end to see you kill him."

She quivered a little—her thoughts were turning from the wolf in front of them, to herself, to her own pride and strength. Good, maybe a little conceit was what she needed. "You saw that?" she asked.

"I did, through Zant's eyes. And what wide eyes they were at that moment."

Some focus returned to her gaze—its desperate, dreamlike sheen dissolved into her usual sharp red.

"You are a talented witch, Midna," he coaxed. The sooner she could follow his voice, his praise, out of her despair the sooner they could be on their way. He tried to keep his foot from tapping impatiently. "You rival some of the best Gerudo sorceresses I have known." That, at least, was not a lie. His mothers' voices fell silent in his head, leaving his other thoughts in peace.

She just stared, motionless, eyes locked on the ground between her and the dead wolf. For a good minute she sat in silence, breathing shallowly, hands clenching and unclenching themselves in her lap. Finally, when Ganondorf prepared to accept the fact that he might have to leave her behind, she blinked and shook her head. She twitched as if waking from a long sleep, and lifted her eyes to the empty road ahead.

"I think I just realized something," she said. She pulled herself from the dirt and wiped it from her knees. "I deserve to be here."

He could not help the cynical twitch of a smile from touching his features. He turned from her, stepping over the spot where the wolf once lay, now clear and empty, and made his way deeper into the forest's shadows, Midna behind him.


	7. Farore

"Do you hear that?" Midna pricked up her ears under her hood at the fluttering noise. For a moment it sounded like a bird's call—until she could make out a distinct melody in the seemingly random notes. A shiver traveled down her spine and she took a deep breath to calm herself.

"Yes." Ganondorf did not turn. He just continued with a purposeful, controlled fury toward the source of the whimsical music, cape flipping in his wake. A few strands of hair had come loose from his Gerudo headpiece, and waved from his skull almost like fire. He did not seem to notice or care.

"So we should follow it," she said. She had been through this routine once before, on the back of a wolf, in the dark forests of Farore's province. The sounds of the forest had gotten her through that trial, though not without a few lingering nightmares (she figured it might have been an indicator of the goddess' personality to have a forest full of ghosts and imps, of evil puppets and poison plants—though Midna had to admit she harbored some negative views of the goddesses lately). When the path before them split into three, she pointed in the direction of the noise, and reluctantly, with a suspicious scowl, Ganondorf acquiesced.

They traveled through that fork, and another, and another, while the music grew louder and more violent in their ears. The flits and trills of the flute around them sounded more to Midna like the horrid screech of silverware on porcelain than that of singing birds. Fortunately, she did not have to listen for long—the music stopped abruptly when she and Ganondorf stumbled out into a green-lit clearing of wildflowers and swaying grass.

Before them, sitting on a gnarled stump, shaded in the protective umbrage of swaying oak trees, sat a woman. Or at least it looked like some sort of bastardization of a woman—the inhuman slope of her face and her pair of shining antlers made her seem like something else entirely. Her thick, curly hair fell around furry shoulders, and her fingers danced around the black holes of a wooden flute, coaxing nonsensical trills from it. She must've seen them from a corner of her slanted green eye, since she lowered the instrument when they approached. She twisted on her stump, crossing her long legs and flexing the hairy, ape-like feet at their ends. Her ungulate ears pricked up, and her eyes found them, narrowing with pleasure. Her pupils were long and flat, like those of an Ordish goat, and when she smiled, Midna swore she could spy fangs.

"It's about time," she sighed. Her voice almost bleated, almost roared—it was a strange sound in Midna's ears, and it almost made her raise her hands to cover them. How so many bestial calls could be folded into that voice evaded her, but she could hear each one distinctly—the chirrup of a bird, the growl of a beast, the bellow of an elk. The goddess rose from her stump, clutching its roots with dextrous toes, and stretched to her full, absurd height. "I heard you killed my sister."

"I did," Ganondorf answered.

"Idiot." She turned like a creaking tree, grand and old and made of all things invincibly natural. "You think you can kill her like you would a woman. But she is more than that. And so am I."

Midna's heart pattered furiously in her chest, and she widened her stance, bare feet digging into the soft dirt under them. Her fingers twitched, weaving a spell, just in case the goddess came for her. But Farore backed away, long, shaggy tail flicking like a contented dog's. She arced herself against the trees, brown sinking into brown, until Midna could no longer tell where the trunks ended and she began.

"'Hide not the truth,'" came the goddess' voice, misty and distant. "Is that not what your mothers had said?"

 _My mothers?_ Midna asked herself, but when she looked over at Ganondorf, she saw the words pierce him. She could sense the growl lingering in his throat, and his lips curled back in a snarl. She could feel the heat pulsing from his skin, and a few more hairs unwound from his headpiece, spiraling like fire. He seemed to grow bigger with anger, and two small pillars of smoke puffed from his nostrils.

Farore's laugh was both like a twittering bird and a braying mule. "So I shall not hide the truth. From either of you." With that, the goddess disappeared from sight entirely, leaving the two of them alone in a flash of white.

Midna was suddenly faced with a strange landscape. Colorless, broad, it lingered over her like a trap, heavy with ugly light. Flickering circles of water rippled around her, and a few reeds, soft and swaying in a nonexistent wind, tickled her ankles. A thick mist descended on them, limiting her vision and sending a shiver through her. This was nothing like the clearing it had been a fraction of a second ago; instinctively she crept closer to Ganondorf, turning her back against his and scanning the vague horizon for any sign of the goddess.

But she did not appear. Instead, a small black silhouette crept from the mist. It had a casual saunter and a long, thin shape Midna recognized immediately. She grit her teeth and narrowed her eyes when she saw herself materialize from the white fog, no more than a young child, smile on her face. She wore a long, simple black dress, its hood flipped back, sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She could see the patches and stitches where her handmaid had mended it—it was her preferred attire for mischief, and her caretakers had grown so weary of replacing her clothes they had let her wear this one into ruin.

Midna had always favored bare feet—even now, she shunned the delicate pointed shoes of her station and preferred to feel and sense the ground through her skin. The little Midna before her also wore no shoes, but her feet had been stained black enough that it seemed otherwise. This Midna had trekked through the twilit mud.

No, she remembered, it had not been mud at all. Not this day, when she wore that dress for the last time. It had been something else.

Before little Midna's toes lay a small bundle of black feathers and pointed talons: a baby kargarok, or what was left of it, struggling to breathe, its big trumpet of a mouth stuck wide open in shock. Midna had not, and would not, concern herself with its suffering. It had been the first thing she'd felled with the black whips that came from her fingers, it was the day she knew her mother's wishes for her daughter came true. She still remembered the pride, the way she ran about the palace, leaving little bloodied footprints in her wake. Her mother had lifted her in her arms and looked into her eyes with satisfaction (it was all a girl could hope for from a woman like that—a woman too practical, too preoccupied with utility and accomplishment to prattle on with useless praise). She had forgotten about the blood, about the bird, and later that night, someone had swept away the dead pile of feathers and twisted talons, to be forgotten among the day's trash.

And Midna had only been proud that she had finally grown into her own magic. The killing of the shadowy bird had not even been secondary—it had concerned her not at all. It would take little Midna years to come to the realization that what she had done may have been wrong, and only through the careful tutelage of her betters. Her regret for the bird was an artificial construct, wholly different from what she had felt at the moment of her accomplishment.

And the same feeling came over Midna as it had when she knelt at the belly of the wolf in the woods—a feeling the child Midna would push to the back of her mind for years, hiding her fear of it behind her wit, her lovely, knowing smile, and occasional convenient benevolence.

It was her own certainty, the absolute knowledge that she was not, and never would be, a good person. The realization washed over her like an ablution, saving her from the dubious hope that it could be any other way. She had not cared for the bird, she had not cared for anyone but herself, for her entire life. Even when she had convinced herself, in her own conceited, moralistic way, that she had changed, she had only done so for her own benefit. Even when she thought of Link, his wide, easy smile and bright eyes, she knew she had shown him kindness only because he could serve her. She had freed that wolf in the castle dungeon only because she thought he might be of use to her. And when he had done what she'd ordered, when he'd delivered every fraction of every treasure she'd demanded right into her hands, she still had not made it up to him. He had served her in so many different ways, and she had not repaid him once for his efforts.

No, she was not a good person. She was a powerful person, an intelligent person, a person who knew how to use others for her own ends with astounding results. She was talented, she was clever, she was manipulative and beautiful. She could crack the whip of black magic or the whip of her tongue with equal ease and skill. But she was not kind, she was not noble, she was not the kind of woman any kingdom would want for a queen, or the kind of woman anyone would want for a lover. She deserved to be here. She deserved to watch the gods of the world die, if only to solidify the cynicism that had buoyed her through life so far, and would until she lay herself down for the last time.

And whatever accusations Farore leveled at her through this mist, whatever aspersions she might cast on her character, Midna would accept. If what the goddess showed her was the truth, and undoubtedly it was, she would have to receive it with open arms.

 _I am, after all, a princess of shadow,_ she told herself. _What is shadow without a little darkness? I am a loathsome little imp, and I always will be._ She tilted her head back and laughed at the mist, a mix of despair and relief whirling in her chest. _At least that little kargarok got to see some real magic before it died._

With a smile on her face, she strode through the mist, feet barely touching the surface of the wide white pond, and reached out for herself. She lay her hand on the child's orange head, patting the mess of electric hair. They faced one another, red gazes meeting in knowing satisfaction.

But then the child was no longer Midna—she was an entirely different little girl. Angry, bright blue eyes flashed before her, and Midna stepped back. She lifted her hand from the child's head, now covered with white cloth, blonde hair tucked tightly under it. The girl swayed impatiently, dressed in the finery of the Hyrulean royal family, and Midna swore she could recognize the lines and wrinkles of her furrowed, pouting face. When the little girl lifted an accusatory finger in Midna's direction, she backed up, nearly tripping over her own feet, straight into Ganondorf's broad chest. Two hands gripped her shoulders (they almost _burned_ ), holding her upright—though whether for her own good or because he intended to use her as a shield, she did not know.

"Father," the little girl started. She was looking through Midna now, at Ganondorf. "That man has evil eyes."

Ganondorf's hands tightened around Midna's shoulders, but he merely lifted her off the water (the drips tickled her feet as they ran down her skin), and placed her beside him, out of his way. With the path between him and the child cleared, he started toward her, drawing his sword.

She did not seem concerned. "Put him away, Father," she insisted. "He is a scourge, a shroud of darkness, he is an evil man. He is a greedy thief, Father. I _know_ what he wants, I have _seen_ it—"

When Ganondorf swung his sword through the child, she disappeared in a puff of mist. Laughter echoed behind her, though it was not entirely hers—there were tones of birdsong in it, flavors of rustling leaves.

From the dissipating mist of the girl's body, another shape emerged, again eerily familiar to Midna. It was a boy, dressed in Link's clothing. Though he seemed different from the man she knew, there were parts of him that were the same, that were uncanny, uncomfortable, even. She could barely force herself to look at him.

"I know what you did," he said. His voice was hoarse, heavy with gravity. His eyes were far too dark, far too sad to belong in the round face of a child. "What you will do. We both know."

Calmly, Ganondorf swung his sword through the boy's neck, and he disappeared into smoke. The Gerudo stood his ground, body still, eyes darting around the empty landscape. Another laugh echoed across the pool, rippling the white water.

"Can you not face your truth?" Farore's snigger sent a chill down Midna's spine. "You were bested by two children. Not for the first time, either." A billow of something white, not quite a shadow, not quite anything else, flitted in the mist. "Not for the last."

Ganondorf set his jaw, eyes trained on the swirling fog, saying nothing. Midna could not tell what emotions, if any, lingered behind his narrowed gaze. He just stood in tense silence, waiting, sword hovering.

"You even _died_ , didn't you?" came the voice, echoing over them in every direction. "Yes, you lost yourself for a fraction of a second there, I remember, when the sages skewered you like so much meat." Ganondorf shifted his body, sword raised, as the images of white, ghostly men appeared around him, each holding a perfect copy of his own sword. "You were afraid—hah, _afraid_. All because a little girl saw a vision in her dreams. All because a little boy had the foresight to stop you."

In one grand swing, Ganondorf reduced the sages around him back to droplets of white air. Midna kept close to his back, eyes searching for any sign of the goddess in the fog.

"You don't know what they did to your sisters, do you? How they confirmed their suspicions?"

An image of a woman rose from the water, gaunt, hunched, dark-skinned and yellow-eyed, starved hips jutting above her ripped and stained trousers. Midna clenched her teeth when she saw the dark stripes of lashings on her stomach, broken fingers dangling uselessly from her hands. She wore two bruised eyes and a split lip, a gash across her forehead and a ghostly, vacant stare.

"You Gerudo tell yourselves you are strong, but you break like any other."

Grimacing, Ganondorf swept his sword through his tortured kinswoman, and she disappeared with a whimper of pain, back into the white horizon. Farore's animal giggle echoed around them, and Midna thought, just barely, she could point out where it may have come from.

She backed up to him, leaning and whispering in his ear, as the goddess' laughter rippled around them in air and water. "To your right."

He didn't move. He made something of a whispered grunt, but he kept his eyes trained on the spot where the Gerudo woman had disappeared. As both of them expected at this point, another figure rose, an image of Farore herself, cloaked heavily in the mist around her. She took a step toward him, smile widening, antlers shining in the light—

And he swung to his right, a wide, blind strike, but his blade cut through that flit of white mist, where the goddess actually stood. The untouched image in front of them flickered out, but a very real cry burst from the mist. Ganondorf turned and swung again, blade meeting fog like it would solid flesh.

The world around them dissipated in smoke, rising up to the sky and dispelling in the light. Now again in the grassy clearing, Farore writhed under the creaking trees. White blood, like sap from the leaves of a plant, poured from the gash in her side, and she limped away from Ganondorf, simian hands reaching for her dropped flute.

Ganondorf got to her before her fingers could wrap around the instrument. He stepped to her and kicked her furred chest, raising his sword as she stumbled back into her stump, sharp teeth bared. When the tip of his sword entered her stomach, she released a pained whine, like that of an injured dog. Ganondorf cut her howl short when he raised his other hand, summoning a familiar golden light.

From there, it was a similar routine to what Midna had seen in Nayru's underwater cave. With a grunt of effort, Ganondorf plunged his golden hand into the goddess' body. Midna could barely see for all the bright light, but when he removed his fist again, she could make out the shape of the object inside. It did not move, its wooden surface dripping white, round like the curled knot of a tree. It was not a soft thing like Nayru's had been, but when Ganondorf squeezed its sides, flames whipped up from beneath it, evaporating the sap-like blood and blackening its surface. As it burned to ashes in his hand, the body of Farore stilled, wide goat's eyes flickering to a stop.

Ganondorf loosened his fingers around the ashes and watched them blow away in the breeze. Somewhere, far in the distant wooded hills, a wolf howled in misery. The body decayed rapidly, like Nayru's had, but instead of floating away in pieces, it seemed to sink into the earth, mushrooms climbing with impossible speed from the wound in her chest. A few creeping vines wrapped around her and dragged her back into the soft dirt under the grass, and more than a few insects alighted on her antlers as she descended.

When the body disappeared, fully swallowed by the earth, Ganondorf turned toward the little flute. A curious look on his face, he bent to pick it up.

Midna stepped forward when she saw him grip both ends of the instrument in large brown fingers. "Hey, maybe we could use—"

He snapped it in half before she could finish. When she approached him, he offered her the splinters, amusement shining in his yellow eyes.

"Use it then," he said, flashing her a wide grin (she took a second to consider if his teeth had always been pointed like that).

She took the broken wood, looking it over, and all of a sudden (and not for the first time) she was blindsided by the absurdity of it all. She started to laugh, wickedly, bitterly, and wrapped her fingers around the instrument before squeezing it into further ruin. She dropped it in the swaying grass and followed Ganondorf as he sauntered toward the end of the clearing, past Farore's empty stump, into the darkest shadows of the woods.


	8. Hide Not the Truth

The forest ended in open sky. When Ganondorf guided Midna through the thickest tangle of vines and branches (still growing, of course, but without the malicious movement imbued by the presence of their mother-god), and they emerged into the open space that marked the edge of Din's realm, she only wore a jaded smile.

"I expected as much," she said, when they emerged from the canopy of trees to find themselves at the edge of an abrupt cliff, below which stretched nothing but pink-sanded desert. Her eyes followed the curve of the dunes, rising and falling into the hazy distance. "Is that where we're going?" she asked, stretching a long pale finger to a tiny red smear on the horizon. It was merely the smallest hint of a mountain from this distance, but it was certainly a taller peak than any in Hyrule.

"Yes." He started the trek down the cliffside, keeping to the narrow path Din had no doubt carved for him. He was quite certain she had sensed the deaths of her sisters and now waited with ill intent at the top of that faraway mountain.

"It's going to be a long walk," Midna said.

He did not look up at her, but he heard her bare feet slap against stone as she followed him down toward the sand, away from the vibrant forest. "Do not tell me you need to rest," he sighed.

"No. I'm just impatient."

She did not see the smile that passed over his face. "Eager to return to Hyrule, are you?"

"You might say that. I'll certainly have an interesting story to tell. Though it might not circle around for long if you decide to destroy the place when we're done here."

"What makes you think I'm going to destroy it?"

"Just the kind of archetype you are," she said. "You have no idea how many tales of heroes and villains I've poisoned myself with since childhood."

"Why would I want to destroy the place I now rule?" he asked. "Would that not be like setting fire to one's own house?"

He could almost hear the whispers of her robe as she shrugged. "Who knows. You look like you could live happily in a burning house."

"Why do you say that?"

"You seem a little febrile, for one."

"I do not feel like it."

"I mean your hair's on fire."

He reached a hand to his forehead, running his fingers through smooth, light hair, now sticking from his forehead unrestrained by the intricate gold of his headdress. When he brought his hand back down, it was black with smoke. "Hm," he muttered.

"I knew the Sacred Realm was supposed to change people, but I thought the stories about beasts and demons were bullshit. I thought the change was only… you know, on the inside."

Ganondorf examined his hand, circling his forefinger around his thumb. His fingers were grayish, dry, but it could've just been the climbing heat of the desert. He noticed his nails had grown longer, too. _Beasts, spirits, demons_ , he laughed in his head. "The Sacred Realm reflects our hearts in our bodies," he said. "Changes on the inside manifest on the outside."

"Well, then. There have certainly been some upgrades to your interior." They had reached the bottom of the cliff and now took their first steps into the white sand. "Ugh, why this heat…"

Ganondorf did not notice it. But Midna lifted herself off the ground, floating on a bed of shadow, bare feet safe from the burning grains of sand beneath her.

"Look at yourself, too," Ganondorf said, as he led her along the crest of a dune. "You have grown much since your arrival here. In many ways." He glanced at her, now reclining on the billows of air almost effortlessly. "Look how long of a shadow you cast."

She turned her elongated body and glanced to the darkness beneath her. It descended down the slope of the sand, kinked in the trough, and ascended up the next, for three or four dunes over. It may have been a mile or so long. "Oh," she muttered. A little pride colored her voice when she noted exactly how far it stretched. "I must've grown taller."

"And stronger."

"You don't suppose…" She turned on her pillows of darkness, crossing her lovely legs and raising a curious finger to her cheek. "You don't suppose we've been feeding off the goddesses, do you? Absorbing the power they leave after they die, or something stupidly trite like that."

"I cannot say. It could be that, it could simply be an effect of the Realm."

"Can't you ask that Triforce of yours? Doesn't it have a piece that's more than wise enough to tell you?"

"It does. But I just don't care enough to ask."

Midna laughed. The way she threw back her head and exposed her wicked teeth (now sharp again, as they had been when she was an imp) reminded him of the women of his own land. They had been quick to laugh, especially in derision, right until the very end. More than one had died with a sardonic smile on her colored lips.

Midna seemed to follow his thoughts exactly, though if it was through some confluence of their reasoning or merely through her witchcraft, he couldn't tell. "So… you grew up in a place that looks just like this, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Tell me about it."

He narrowed his eyes at her. She crossed her long fingers under her chin, lips parting in that evil smile of hers, and he shook his head. What could he possibly tell her about his homeland that would do it justice? He could recite to her the poetry of the deepest desert, he could tell her thousands of stories of his sisters' exploits, impart to her the words of his mothers' wisdom, show her a piece of magic she had not yet seen.

Faced with so many choices, he decided on all of them. It would be a long journey from here to Din's enormous mountain, and it would assuage some of the boredom, at least. So he spoke as he walked, regaling her with the details of his homeland—the customs, the lore, the ancient fables, the way magic permeated all things, from war to cooking to childbirth. He told her of the temples that once stood tall in the desert, blessed with water, the patches of lush flora that dotted the empty landscape like treasures waiting to be discovered. He told her of the high, dry mountains of the northern wastes, of the ghosts of lost travelers that haunted the endless sands, of the laughter of his sisters, of his mothers, of the arts of poetry and music and fighting. He told her of his closest companions and lost friendships, of lovers disappearing into the wind.

Speaking of these things, which he had not spoken of in over a century (for he had never needed to) almost made him feel at home again. Even the wind on his back, which was heavy with the Sacred Realm's unmistakable smell, seemed to be a familiar one, flavored with the scent of cooking spices and the bright vibrancy of magic. The desert around him, though different to the landscape of his home, started to morph into recognizable shapes—he saw the faces of familiar women in the dunes, the distant shadows of temples long destroyed rising in the haze.

But he knew they were not real. He knew if he pursued them, they would disappear in a puff of sand, but the thought of these mere illusions, so close to him, brought a bitter smile to his face. It was a decidedly different smile than he'd worn the last time he'd been to his homeland—it was now sharp-toothed and too wide, but it was his own nonetheless.

"Tell me more about this Nabooru woman," Midna said, as the red peak rose steadily in the distance. Behind it, something of a sun had appeared, but it made no move to set or rise. It just hovered above the tip of the mountain like a guiding beacon. "She sounds like me."

"I suppose she was like you," Ganondorf admitted. "She was much different in many ways, though."

"Oh?"

Ganondorf narrowed his eyes against the distant sun, trying to hide his smile behind a squinting grimace. "She was graceful, for one. She was tough and witty and so incredibly strong, but she walked like a princess. She could stride through a field of leevers and they would part for her like so many devotees."

"And you think I couldn't?" Midna's accusation came with a sharp-toothed grin. "I'm plenty graceful. I once bumped into my mother's most precious vase and caught it with my foot before it hit the ground." She turned on her belly and raised her legs, crossing her ankles. "But then I smashed it on purpose for being in my way."

"Nabooru would've known better than that," he said. "She would've tied it to her back and slipped off with it to the market."

"Maybe I could've saved myself a scolding if I'd done that," Midna answered. She paused for a moment. "So what happened to her?"

Ganondorf lost his smile. "The same thing that happened to the others." The mountain grew closer, and he shielded his eyes against the reddening sun. "She avoided the War for so long. When the rest of us were marching off toward Hyrule, she turned on her heel and went the other way. Whether she was a child looking out merely for her own interests or whether she was far wiser than the rest of us, I'll never know. But for all her running, she got nowhere. They ended her the same way they did all of us."

"Well," Midna started. "Maybe if you use that Triforce right you can see her again." Her pensive look melted into her usual mischief, and she coaxed a little levity back into her face. "Then we'll see who's the most graceful."

Despite himself, Ganondorf felt his mouth upturn. "Are you jealous? It is not every day a princess is told a poor thief outdoes her in nearly every aspect of beauty."

"Well, that necessitates us using the Gerudo definition of beauty," she answered. "Which, if the conversations I've overheard are true, has little to do with how a lady actually looks."

"A pretty face comes secondary to a strong will and cleverness. It does a Gerudo woman good if she can swing a blade, too. Or conjure a spell or two."

"Well, I can check three of the four off that list. Guess that gives me a decent shot at the pinnacle of true Gerudo beauty. But if you hand me that sword I can show you how I swing it."

"No." He was unsure if she was still being playful, but he knew better than to hand his weapon to her, compliant though she was. A conversation to pass the time could not make him forget she was technically his prisoner.

She twisted, chuckling. "Probably for the best. I'd rather leave my swordsmanship a mystery than have you know _exactly_ how poor it is." She paused, letting a nostalgic smile pass over her lips. "The first time I held one, I had no idea what to do with it. I was terrible. Though there are few enough witnesses that the word can't get out. So, as far as the world is concerned, I might as well be decent."

"The truth of the matter doesn't trouble you?"

"Not one bit," Midna said. She flipped onto her back, reclining in the clouds of shadow, robe billowing as if through water. "To people who don't know you, there is no difference between what's said and what is. You're what other people make of you, so you'd better be damn sure they spread the right kind of lies."

Ganondorf found himself grunting in something close to agreement. He couldn't help but admit the advantages of equating the truth and the apparent truth; perhaps if he'd adopted that outlook, he may have avoided his own arrest and execution. Perhaps if he'd acknowledged the dreams of the little Hyrulean princess as reality, if he had considered the rumors about him to be truth and fled back to the desert in time, he would not be here now, wandering the sacred wastes with a glowing wound in his chest. The soldiers and magistrates in Hyrule had not concerned themselves with the truth—they hadn't cared about what he _hadn't_ done. They only cared about the fictions that were told about what he would do, and it was just as good to them as truth.

Ganondorf had to consider the value of Midna's conflation. Back then, when he'd been punished for a crime he allegedly intended to commit, he had had a good sense of what separated reality from lies. Now, he was not so sure. Both in the golden surface of the Triforce and here in the Realm, he'd seen the lines between time, space and imagination blur. He'd caught glimpses of events that had both happened and never would, of forks and confluences in time that flowed toward and away from the same place. All these events, all these glimpses down the diverging river of history were true in their own sense, though Ganondorf could only float down one path at a time—at least, as he was now. The way the Realm had changed him, the physical manifestations of his truest, barest essence, made him consider the possibility that he might travel up and down them as he pleased. But the answer to that question would come later, when he destroyed his oldest enemy and regained his full self.

As the sand hardened, wispy grains making way for gravel and large stones, he turned to make sure Midna still followed. She had lowered her bare feet back to the ground, clinging to the rocks with her bluish toes, wrapping herself against the sudden wind that blew down from the towering peak. When sand ascended to slope, she glided between boulders, stepping over dry gullies and twisting up cracks with her eyes lowered in thought. She slipped between obstacles like a true shadow, no more impeded by them than she would be by air.

Meanwhile, he was relegated to his own legs. The slope did not trouble him—his muscles were strong and his will stronger, but the going was slow. Every once in a while he'd raise his eyes to the blinding peak of sun and rock, but he could not keep them there for too long. There were cliffs and canyons down here at the mountain's base he had to worry about. The landscape was barren, the mountain tough and completely empty—but for this he found himself thankful. There were no hallucinations, no images or tricks of magic, no voices or beasts stalking them up the hillside. Din had been his matron deity from birth (like many other Gerudo), and had made herself known as a straightforward god, unconcerned with illusion or trickery. He supposed that may have been where he went wrong after the War—hiding his intentions and being accused regardless only made the sting of the executioner's sword so much worse. If he had waltzed into the King's chamber the day after the fighting stopped and murdered him, perhaps Din would've looked favorably on him for his honesty. But as it was now, she had to face the same fate as her sisters. Ganondorf found himself much less apologetic about it than he expected.

 _Regret nothing_ , his mothers had said. And he didn't intend to.

"Hey." Midna's voice was absurdly close, yet still soft under the wailing wind of the bare mountain. He had been so lost in the maze of his own thoughts he'd failed to notice she had found her way out of hers.

"What?" he asked. He pulled himself over the next boulder as Midna effortlessly hovered up beside him.

"Remember in the forest, you asked me what I would wish for?" He stopped, looking back out over the desert, an endless ripple of pink-gold against a hazy sky. It looked like the windswept surface of some pond, moving too slowly in time for any roving eye to notice.

"Yes."

"I've been thinking about it, probably too much."

When he was satisfied with surveying his progress, he returned his attention to ascending the next shelf of rock. "And?"

"And I think you're right. If I'd gotten my hands on the Triforce first, it wouldn't have given me what I knew I should want. It would have given me him. But not quite the way you would think."

When he couldn't find a way up, Ganondorf tapped his foot on the ground. Slats of rock cracked from the cliffside, lining up before him like so many stairs. While he waited for them to assemble, he turned his eyes to Midna, half intrigued.

"I just wanted us to be what we were," she said. She had raised her eyes to the cliff before them, but he could not tell if it was because his construction of a staircase interested her, or if she had nowhere else to stare blankly as she spoke. "When it came time to kill you, to take the castle back, I couldn't stand it. I told myself otherwise, and I sucked it up and did what I needed to, but deep in my heart I didn't care that it was the right thing to do, that it was the only thing to do. I wanted to stay the way we were, always one step away from the end of our journey. I didn't care that I was an imp, that he was some sort of animal. I wanted to keep riding on his back and lingering in his shadow." She blinked and eyed Ganondorf, tearing her gaze away from the changing wall of rock. "Of course, I buried it all in the back of my mind. Each day, I would wake and dread that day would be our last. But all good things end. I knew better than to wish for the impossible."

The steps in front of him crumbled to a halt, and he glanced over at Midna. "Look where you are, princess. Look what you've done. Do you think you're in any position to talk about impossibility?" He could feel her eyes lock on him as he pushed himself up the first step of rock. She floated behind him in silence as he wound his way up the cliffside, following his staircase, occasionally glancing back over the landscape to gauge his progress. "How far do you think we've come?" he asked.

"It's hard to tell," she answered. She paused for a moment, collecting her thoughts. "Not so much because I can't see how far it is, but that the distance we covered seems like… not a distance at all. I can't say how many miles."

"Or hours," he growled. It did not surprise him to learn she had grown attuned to the particularly bizarre topography of the land—that she had discovered the path one walked could not be so easily measured in distance or time.

"Or days or years." Midna flashed him one of her impish looks. "If we return to Hyrule only to find it has crumbled into ancient ruins, I'll kill you."

"I'm sure you will." She would hardly be pleased if she returned to Hyrule to find her boy had grown to an old, gnarled man.

As he stepped up his ladder of rock toward the plateau above him, each footfall triggered a cascade of rumbling beneath him. Small rocks tumbled off the hillside, falling down brown canyons and bare slopes, and the mountain seemed to shake underneath him with a deliberate rhythm.

"I guess you've gained weight," Midna gibed. She slithered out of the way of a passing shower of rocks, and Ganondorf lifted his hand to ward off a few.

"It's Din." Even when he reached the top of the plateau and stood still at its edge, the drumming of stone continued, trembling up and down the hillside, dislodging the scree above them in great, rhythmic vibrations. "She's announcing our arrival."

"Sure likes the beat of her own drum, doesn't she?" Midna said.

"She does." He took a step toward the last slope of scree before them. The peak was within sight, and within their grasp, if they could traverse the loose rock without being thrown from it by a particularly powerful tremor.

They made their way forward, toward the goddess, undeterred by the violent reverberations of her drums. When they reached the scree and started the final ascent to the sunny peak, Midna slinking around the falling stones and Ganondorf breaking them open with thrusts of magic, the drums grew louder, faster, coaxing out beats from the belly of the mountain. Smoke curled from the tip of the peak, and as they fought their way up, the heat of the air intensified. It grew thick, hotter than the atmosphere of the desert below them, choked with energy and fire.

Midna did not seem to revel in it as Ganondorf did. Sweat poured down her forehead and across her stomach as she ascended, but she did not slow, she didn't give in, didn't flinch at the drumbeats that quaked beneath her or at the waves of stones that came inevitably crashing down after them. She, like him, kept her attention focused on the rocky pinnacle, unwavering.

Far above them, where the scree made way for the jutting red bones of the mountain, Ganondorf could make out a dark speck, the barest suggestion of a humanoid shape against the sun. When they got closer, overstepping dislodged rocks and holding their ground when the scree slid around them, Ganondorf could make out the figure leaning on what looked to be a walking stick. From the way it loitered, it must've enjoyed watching these two strangers struggle up the last, steepest stretch of dangerous slope. When each thumping beat of the drum shook up a mild rockslide, Midna twisted herself over the stones and Ganondorf planted his feet, balancing on the quivering rocks and holding himself in place with Gerudo sand-magic (the scree tumbled just like sand might, and fortunately for him, the magic itself did not care about the size of the grains). He kept himself above the cascading earth and moved onward, until the figure at the top of the slope was no longer just a black speck.

"Is that her?" Midna appeared beside him, lifting her feet to let a few rocks tumble by before placing them delicately on the remaining stones.

"Yes." He could make out hair as fiery as his own—in the literal sense, licking and spiraling on her head like real flames. She had raised one hand over her eyes, as if to block out the sun and better see their progression up the hill.

"She sure knows how to make a climb difficult."

Ganondorf raised his hands and spread his arms, magic pushing the oncoming rocks aside as hands might push aside water. "She is Din, the mountain-mover, the earth-shaker. She is the one who spins the planets and separates lands from one another. She is the one who made the soil of all realms, including your own. She split the earth and pushed the barren wastes of your world away from Hyrule, and kept the green fields for her own people."

Midna narrowed her eyes at the figure. "Then I guess I owe her a few words."

"You owe her more than that," he said, summoning a wave of magic to throw a particularly large boulder rolling his way over his shoulder and down the mountain.

He and Midna scrambled up the slope, all under the watchful eyes of the woman above them, enduring the waves of rock that tumbled down on them with each beat of Din's massive drums. The goddess herself did not appear to be playing them—she just stood on a precipice, leaning on her staff, as the empty heart of the mountain beat beneath her. These drums, it appeared, played themselves.

The closer they got to the goddess, the slower their ascent became. The drums picked up their tempo, the rocks tumbled endlessly, mercilessly, but Din drew closer, and each time Ganondorf raised his eyes he could see a little more of her.

With a first glance he glimpsed her posture and build—casual, relaxed, stocky—she appeared the most human of the three goddesses he'd met so far. With the second he saw the shock of red hair lapping from her skull, a thin billow of smoke rising above it. With the third he saw her face; her smile was wide, her eyes large and black, and her cheeks flushed in pleasure at the sight of their struggle.

He did not need a fourth glance at her. With an explosion of rock and magic, with a grunt of effort and the musical sound of Midna's shadow-spell, the two of them cleared the scree. Pulling themselves from the unstable stones onto the solid rock jutting from the mountain's summit, they lifted their heads. Before them, leaning nonchalantly on her feathered walking stick, stood Din.


	9. Din

"You've done well," the goddess said. "To kill my sisters, to climb this mountain." Her black eyes shone almost mirthfully, as if she had told some joke she was particularly proud of. "But I'm afraid you won't get any farther. My sisters may be reborn of the wind and water, but when I kill you, you will lay dead on this bare rock for eternity." She smiled; her hair flared like a joyful fire, and her teeth shone in the sun, pointed and wide as an animal's. She lifted her staff from the ground and stepped forward, plain brown clothes blowing in the heartless wind. "Well, come at me, then. I don't have all day."

Ganondorf mirrored her smile, and Midna had to marvel at how similar it was to the goddess'. He stepped toward her, hand wandering to his sword hilt, and she wasted no time swinging the butt end of her staff at him. Lithely, he twisted out of the way, black cape throwing shadow across the mountain. He drew his blade and blocked her next strike, and the clamoring of weapon against weapon seemed to shake loose the stones around them.

"You, of all people, have the impudence to fight your mother-god?" Din growled. She swept back, staff whistling through the thick air, and Ganondorf followed, sword-tip first.

"I have had many mothers," he said, "and all of them better than you."

A disturbing noise emanated from Din—it took Midna a moment to realize it was a hearty laugh. Her face seemed to blur with the laughter; her clothes, arms and hair all engulfed in the red flame of her movement, and the beating of drums grew louder beneath them. The rock cracked and crumbled as Din, now completely engulfed in the power of her own flames, struck down at Ganondorf with such force Midna feared his sword would break under her staff.

 _She should know better than to bring a stick to a sword fight,_ she told herself, before she threw a massive arm of shadow toward the goddess. It arced over her, spreading rippling wide fingers, casting a shadow over her destructive flame. Placing Ganondorf in the space between two fingers, she pressed her thumb and forefinger together—the massive hand mimicked her movements, pinching Din between its pads like one might pinch out a flame. But when the darkness enveloped the goddess, when by all rights that candle wick should've gone up in smoke, she just burst through the shadow stronger than ever. The length of Midna's long black hand evaporated into the light of her flame, and Midna could not help but shake her arm at the sudden heat that seared up its length.

The goddess' staff met white blade once again, and Minda could not help but feel a little inadequate. That bitch had brushed her off like a fly, and Ganondorf seemed to be holding his own against her. Midna could not follow the swift blurs of flaming staff against sword of light, could not distinguish where her ally ended and her opponent began, they moved with the speed and power of gods (it still surprised her how he had grown so different, so much faster and stronger since Nayru's death). So she did the only other thing she could think of, which, she could not deny, was probably too dramatic and definitely far too self-indulgent. Midna reached up with both her hands, squinted her red eyes at the sky, and blotted out the sun.

Darkness swept over the peak faster than she could blink; it poured almost like water from the sky itself, from the corpse of the eaten sun, from every shadow of every rock around them, from the depths of the gullies in the mountainside. Before her the battle raged on—a woman glowing of fire and rage, limbs aflame, staff spitting sparks along its length, and a white sword wielded by an invisible opponent, flitting this way and that seemingly without the limitations of an owner. The darkness swept over Ganondorf like a cloak, concealing whatever fire might come off him, and he did not waste Midna's gift of invisibility. Without the impairment of a wielder who might telegraph its moves, the sword lowered and raised itself again, turning with unnatural, chaotic movement through the air, through the smoke, and into Din's lapping fires. It slid across her arm, and a burst of flame sprang from the wound, soaring into the darkness. Din cried out and backed up, biting her lip and raising her staff defensively. Her black eyes, now two slits of obsidian against the glowing fire of her skin, narrowed toward Midna. She danced over Ganondorf's next swipe and dropped her weapon. It clamored to stillness on the black rocks, and for a brief, foolish moment Midna thought the goddess may have forfeited.

But when she raised her arms, flames bursting from every inch of her, lapping and beating against the darkness, Midna discarded the thought. The thudding of the drums grew louder, faster, and Midna's heart with them. She could feel the black earth shake under her feet, invisible in the darkness. Before her, the earnest advance of Ganondorf's glowing sword was impeded by the waves of fire and impassable power. The forces of Din shook everything around them; Midna and Ganondorf could only look on as she gathered her power.

What had been mere tongues of flame from the goddess' skin burst into an inferno, and the terrible drums exploded deep thumping through every inch of the darkness. Faster and faster the thudding came, louder in Midna's ears, until all sound became nonsense, all thought was shaken from her head, crushed under the beating drums like glass under a hammer. She held her hands up to her ears and almost screamed, almost begged for the goddess to stop, but before any words of cowardice could pass through her gritted teeth, the drumming reached a climax and halted.

In the terrible moment of silence, when even the furious swaying of Din's fire stilled, all seemed at peace. The pulse of the drums still rang echoes in Midna's ears, and her hands trembled as she lowered them. She almost allowed herself to take a breath.

Then in a burst of cracking rock and unconquerable heat, a pillar of liquid flame shot from behind the goddess. It pierced the darkness with an evil red glow, spreading at its tip and showering drops of fire from its horrid peak. Din let out a laugh as insatiable as the fire around her, and threw her arms to her sides. With terrifying growls and rumbles, the stones split at her feet and molten rock spurt upward, bubbling and crawling with an implacable heat down the mountainside. The earth shook with such ferocity Midna could no longer keep her balance; she lifted her feet just in time to avoid a new steaming fissure, from which fresh lava gushed. The heat that rose from the mountain nearly suffocated her, and from every rock, from every hidden point in this expanse of darkness, new light sprang, hungry red and glowing with menace. The mountain seemed to be splitting its sinister face at every point, bleeding with fiery enthusiasm.

Midna curled her feet closer to her and twisted herself above the flame and molten rock, turning and turning her body to escape the glowing heat. Sweat poured down her forehead, her skin burned, and no matter how she turned her body or its shadow to shield herself from the fires, it was no use.

Somewhere ahead of her, in the heart of the flame and flowing rock, Ganondorf stood his ground. Lava curled at his feet, fire lapped at his cloak until it had all but turned it to ash, and still he raised his sword against his matron deity. He now stood fully lit by the mountain's glowing blood, red hair dancing, white teeth shining in the orange light. When Din raised her arms and threw a wave of liquid fire at him, he split it with the edge of his sword. They stood deadlocked for longer than Midna could stand; he with his bright sword, she with the limitless tongue of lava pouring from the mountain behind her.

Seeing him stuck there, under the impassable flow of fire and rock, forced Midna to gather what was left of her draining strength and throw a shadow over her. She did not have the power to keep the sun safely curtained if she wanted to transport herself, but she didn't need to. With a breath of thick, smoky air and more than a few creative curses, she disappeared in a wave of the tiny black sheets emblematic of her people's magic.

She reappeared behind Ganondorf, holding her breath against the tide of heat that threatened to burn her alive. Below her floating bare feet flowed the endless lava, around her licked the godly flames of Din's anger—if she could've taken a breath in that unbearable heat, no doubt she would've screamed. But she couldn't, and she didn't—she just reached out and gripped what remained of Ganondorf's cape, wrapping it through her steaming fingers, gritting her teeth against the heat that radiated from him. On either side of his raised sword, the flow of fire and rock tore the air, burning away the very fabric of the world around them. High above, Midna's darkness relented, and in a flash of blinding light, the sun reappeared. Midna could not shut her eyes against it—she just used the distraction it had given her and gripped Ganondorf tighter, pulling him into the embrace of her magic, into the all-encompassing web of twilit teleportation.

She was not sure if he would notice, or if he was quick enough to take advantage of what she had just given him. But she knew she had to do what she must. She threw them both into the tides of her magic, and let them carry her, as it always unfailingly had, to where she wanted to go. In a flash of darkness almost blinding against the horrible light of the newly-recovered sun, they both reappeared against the infinite white sky. Ganondorf's feet his the rock and rubble, avoiding the flow of molten rock by inches, and Midna uncurled in the air beside him, heart pounding in her chest.

Before them, still throwing waves of insurmountable magic toward where they had been a mere fraction of a moment ago, Din hovered. She still burned with ferocity and power, but the surge of violence she summoned from her hands and the earth beneath her were wasted on empty space. And, Minda realized, it may take her more than a moment to know it. Din was not known among the denizens of Hyrule to be the cleverest of the sisters _._ Fortunately, Ganondorf was proving to be clever at all, since in the tiny sliver of the moment, before even Midna had fully recovered from her own magical translocation, he lifted his sword and stuck it through the goddess' exposed back. It tore through the flames and muscle of her human-like body with a harrowing crack, like a chisel through rock, and it emerged from her bloodless stomach with a burst of molten stone. Din squirmed at the end of his sword, crying out in her hoarse, deep voice, but Ganondorf held the blade firm. Midna found herself clinging to his arm as the goddess struggled to disengage herself, worrying for a moment she might pull herself from the blade, rekindle her flames, and begin the battle anew. But her fire dimmed, her kicking feet slowed, and she weakened just enough that Ganondorf loosed his grip on the blade.

"Hold this," he said, shoving it at Midna. She took it with wide eyes, thin hands wrapping around its warm hilt. She didn't have time to tell him she wasn't strong enough to hold it, to keep a goddess pinned on its tip, since he had already stepped toward Din's exposed back, reaching out a dark hand with fingers clenched in anticipation. A familiar light shone from its back, brightest in two spots, but Midna knew the third would soon enough light up like its sisters.

Fire licked up between them as his fingers pierced Din's back. She let out a furious cry, flames bursting from her skin and threatening to spread to Midna's own hair. The sword grew hotter in her hands, scalding her palms, but she didn't let go. Ganondorf did not seem to mind the fire—he just pushed his hand farther into the goddess' torso and pulled, growling with effort. Din's heart did not come out smoothly; it was accompanied by a cascade of fire and more than a few crumbles of hot rock, but when he successfully ripped her heart from her, it sat still as stone in his hand. A thin trickle of liquid rock seeped from the hole in her back, and she let out one last gasp of fury as Ganondorf squeezed her heart in his hand.

A thin crack shot up its stony middle and it split in half, drips of molten rock oozing from its center. The glowing orange liquid flowed across his palm and dripped to the ground, and he did not seem to notice the heat. He just flexed his hand again, crumbling the halves into gravel, crushing it to pieces in his large fingers, gold light growing brighter with each movement.

But Din was not quite gone, not quite willing to give up. She struggled at the end of the sword, letting loose cries of pain that set Midna's heart pounding in panic against her ribcage. As Ganondorf crushed her heart in his hands, she wriggled, bleeding fire and lava, and her cries turned to a hoarse, evil laughter.

"You will... not..." she started in a haunting rasp, but could not finish. Instead, she lifted one foot, one rebellious part of her that was not quite yet busy with dying, and stomped the earth beneath her. Midna clutched at Ganondorf's sword all the harder as the first cracks in the foundation of rock appeared, chipping and melting into the bubbling flow of liquid fire. Ganondorf glanced back at her, Din's heart still crumbling in his fingers, as the mountain started to sag under them like a bag emptied of its contents. Midna locked eyes with him and tightened her grip, preparing herself for the inevitable.

Even as Ganondorf crushed the final drop of life from Din's heart in his hands, even as her body went limp and the last lick of her flame flickered out, the earth still opened up beneath them. With a creaking, crumbling yawn—the last defiant cry of the glorious goddess—the earth swallowed them whole and they vanished into the darkness of the mountain.

* * *

 _What have you done?_

The icy chill of Midna's mind (the Midna she had once been, concerned with practicality and morality) pricked at her unconscious like so many needles. It was almost the echo of her mother's voice; perpetually disappointed, always silent when it should speak and speaking when it should remain silent. Though she had relied on it all her life, now, in this place, in this body that was something beyond life, it was nothing more than a nag.

 _What have I done?_ she answered herself. _I have killed three gods. I revenged the drowned world, I've revenged my own people. I've killed the goddess that locked us away and condemned them to eke out a living in that barren world of Twilight. And I am—_ here, images of a familiar man flashed past her; an easy smile, a pair of blue eyes rising in wonder to an infinite sky, a jaw clenched in determination— _and I am going to save Link. Soon, when we have killed our last and final enemy, I will return to Hyrule and awaken him._ She could not help the feeling of accomplishment from rushing through her as she recounted the events of… however much time it had been since she'd entered this world.

The cold spirit of her own mind breathed accusation around her. _But what will he think of what you have done?_

She had to admit that she had a point. She wondered what he would think if she told him she had a hand in killing the gods of his world, the three benevolent sisters that had birthed his nation and blessed his people. He could shrug, he could say he trusted her that she knew what she was doing—or, he could receive the confession like a confusing blow to the heart. No part of her ever considered that he might disbelieve her unimaginable tale of killing the gods themselves. He was so trusting, so kind and willing to humor the madness around him…

 _What he does not know cannot hurt him_ , she answered herself. And the last thing she wanted to do was hurt him. He was perhaps the only thing left in Hyrule that was precious to her—the rest could all burn, for all she cared (then again, _he_ might care if the rest burned, so she considered that possibility intrinsically heinous).

 _What will you tell him when you return to him? What_ can _you tell him?_

 _I'll make something up. I always was a decent storyteller. And a much better liar._

 _You would lie to the man you love?_

 _If it meant he does not get hurt. Yes._

A chill moved past her—she chose to interpret it as a frown of disapproval from her own lingering consciousness. She banished her thoughts and let the icy darkness usher her into deeper sleep, away from her resentments, away from her regrets and second thoughts about this whole affair, away from the scattered remains of her own fragile morality.

She never knew the wicked could sleep this well.

* * *

When Midna regained control over herself, she hurt a lot less than she expected. She supposed this had something to do with her falling into the depths of her own element—darkness had always had a way of cushioning her stumbles and failures. So when she pushed herself onto her elbow, she reveled in that familiar feeling of lightless air, of the soft, silent shadow that encompassed her. The length of her legs brushed against darkness almost like silk, and she suddenly found herself a little too comfortable to recover from her fall entirely. She just leaned back and stretched herself out, making sure each bone lay intact, each curve of skin free of blood, each length of muscle untorn. She found herself fully functional.

Some distance away (it was impossible for her to tell how far, or if the concept of distance even applied in this lovely, unlit place), a flame danced. She narrowed her eyes at it, wishing it away as it beat back the darkness, growing brighter and more fierce as it approached her—for a moment she feared it was Din, come back to teach her a lesson. But she recognized the gleam of that particular fire, the way it danced over that dark forehead, and relaxed against her sheets of darkness as her captor—she supposed she would have to come to think of him as something else, perhaps a guide—emerged from the darkness. He loomed delightfully tall above her (she was quite used to being the one who towered over others), hair and eyes aflame, skin shining less like skin and more like the scales of some handsome reptile. Half his clothes had been burned from him, and she could see the shining black skin of his shoulder and neck, lit by the flame of his dancing hair. Smoke rolled and billowed from the cracks in his broken armor, and the wound in his chest brightened with a red hue. It looked like the mouth of a furnace—creative, sweltering, and she could barely squint through its pulsating light.

"You've gotten quite garish," Midna told him, raising her hand to shield her eyes.

"And you've changed not at all," he answered. She did not know if it was merely the acoustics of the black chamber in which they found themselves, but his voice seemed deeper, almost gravelly, like the rumblings of the flaming mountain.

"I have," she said, turning herself onto her side and propping her jaw up with one long-fingered hand. "Just in ways a little harder to notice." She could not exactly describe to him how the fight and fall had changed her, nor how inexplicably natural those changes had felt. She could not now disentangle herself from her mantle of shadow, and had no desire to. She could not tell him how before this journey she had been underdeveloped in body and mind, stuck in her mortal shell like an angry spirit, how she had worn the Fused Shadow and thought she had gained an insurmountable power, how she had faith in the gods of the world, and, worst of all, how she had tricked herself into thinking she was, or could become, a good person.

It was the kind of hopelessness that could've ended a lesser woman. But as it was, the despair flowing through her veins, the self-loathing she had always hidden from the world, was tinged with the joy of freedom. Farore had shown her her worst aspects, yes, but this new Midna, this Midna-like thing who was indistinguishable from the shadows and who had helped kill the gods themselves, did not shy away from those aspects. She was who she was, and she was becoming what she should've been all along, and what she never would've been if she had simply stayed in Hyrule, if she had died with the rest of them, or, and this was a stretch, won the battle against Ganondorf.

She waved over her old enemy, and pushed herself from the bed of shadow. Ganondorf—or whatever it was Ganondorf had become—came closer to her, undeterred by the absolute darkness that shrouded her.

"I feared for a moment you would burn in that fight," he said. There wasn't a tinge of sympathy in his voice that she could recognize, but that didn't matter to her. It was a statement of fact, an uncommon admission of uncertainty, and she would have to count herself lucky to witness even that.

"A sorceress of my caliber?" she laughed. "Please. Any witch with a lick of talent can avoid the pyre, can't she?"

He smiled, his sharp teeth shone white and evil in the light of his own body. Somewhere far behind him, Midna thought she could hear the drums of the mountain still pounding with a quiet fierceness. She perked her ears—she was as sure as he that Din was dead. No, the rhythmic, soft and asymmetric thumping of the distant drums was the beat of a heart, a living heart, not the horrible objects Ganondorf had ripped from the torsos of the goddesses.

"These are your drums now," she said, mostly to herself, when she realized the beats coincided with the pulsations of the light in his wounded chest.

"I saved them for you, since you so regretted discarding the instruments of the other goddesses." She had not expected such kindness from him—or perhaps it was not kindness, but something else entirely. Payment for her services, perhaps? He probably had not met someone who could blot out the very sun in his favor before. She figured he owed her more than a shoddy set of drums, though.

"Thanks for the consideration," she said. "But I don't want them."

"Very well." With a blink of his burning eyes the drums collapsed into silence. "Let us go."

"Can't we stay here a little longer?" she said. "The shadow is just so cozy."

He reached out a hand to her. In the cracks of his black palm she could see pulsations of fire, like embers in a bed of coal. She followed the arm up its weird, scaly length, to his rolling shoulder, lit with the fire of his hair. She realized, as her eyes settled on his face, that she could barely recognize him as the man who had forced her to enter the Sacred Realm, who had defeated her and used her power to gain entry to this place. He was something entirely different now, something darker, red-eyed and forceful.

She reached up and gripped his hand, hot and strong in hers, and let him pluck her from the comfort of her shadows. She felt naked for a moment, until the flitting darkness caught up to her, wrapping around her once more.

"There is one more thing we must do," he said. His voice was inhuman, redolent of the grumbling of the mountain, of scraping of rock on rock. "Then you are free."

She nodded, and as he turned from her and started their journey upward, she realized she was not entirely sure if she wanted it.


	10. Fire and Shadow

The trek back to the top of the mountain was quiet, but comfortably so. Ganondorf had spent most of it buried in thoughts of his own self, busying his mind with sorting through the flashes of distant memory that came to him, with considering the changes he had undergone. He could not help but smile perversely when he realized how little he resembled his old self—even Midna had become something he barely recognized as the princess of the Twili.

She floated beside him, moving through the darkness at a leisurely pace, humming contentedly to herself in that impish voice of hers. There was no talk of their victory, no talk of their shared experience. And he was perfectly satisfied with that.

He supposed she had her own thoughts to consider, about herself, about the world around them, and about their journey. Some would certainly say an expedition through the Sacred Realm ending in deicide should weigh heavy on their hearts, and others, including his favorite dead Gerudo philosophers, would say it was so inherently absurd it should not be considered anything but lighthearted. He supposed Midna, at least now, was in the latter camp. She had been prone to easy laughter recently, adopting the lightness and whimsy of the shadows that now comprised her.

He knew at this point he no longer really needed her. He might humor her and force her to open the Mirror so that he could return to his own world, just to ensure her journey had not been a total waste. But at this point, she didn't seem eager to turn on him—there was no harm in bringing her along a little longer. Besides, he wanted someone to witness him end his oldest and greatest enemy. What she did after that, whether she stayed in this realm or moved to another, did not concern him.

He was the first out of anyone to admit that this Midna, this lovely thing she had become under the skies of the Sacred Realm, was not a creature of constancy. Even in the form she had now— _especially_ in the form she had now—she would cater to nothing but her own whims, and it would be a denial of her very essence to demand otherwise of her. If he had taken the first few steps toward godhood, she had taken those same steps with him. He had as little control over her as he had of any of the three sister goddesses. And just as shadows flitted opposite light and fire, dancing always where the flames could not reach, so she would dance away from him, to whatever dark place tempted her next.

Perhaps she would return to Hyrule, to the arms of her Hylian boy. Perhaps she would choose to wander the mysterious wastes of the Sacred Realm, a god in her own right. Perhaps she would go back to her home in the Twilight and rule there, or move onto another realm altogether. He could not know, and he didn't need to. He didn't care what she did next, unless it compromised his immediate goals.

When the pinprick of light at the tip of the mountain's open throat shone above him, he quickened his pace up the rocky slopes. The mountain itself had died with Din—there were no longer any gusts of glowing smoke or surges of molten rock, no more rumblings or drumbeats. There was only silent stone, and the upward climb toward the ruined peak of the mountain.

"Is that the sun?" Midna asked. He knew she floated somewhere beside him, but her voice met his ears from every direction, seeping from every inch of the shadow around him as if the darkness itself had spoken.

"It is. Do you think you can endure it?" He was honestly curious; she and shadow were inseparable entities now, with a common enemy.

"If I can't, I can just blot it out. It's not that hard when you put your mind to it."

He grinned—he was sure she could see it in the oppressive dark. He had to admit he was impressed that she could suck the light from the sky with a wave of her arms. He had not expected her to grow so powerful so fast; he had not completely expected as much of himself, either, even though he had started this journey with the power of the Triforce and the inexplicable notion that he was a creature that had spawned from the realm of the eternal. He couldn't explain it then, and he didn't need to now. Clearly it was true.

With each victory, each time he touched the heart and blood of the goddesses, he remembered a little more. The visions came to him in intermittent fragments, jumbled, inconsecutive. He saw a blonde goddess, young and fresh-faced, he saw an ancient war, he saw himself, almost as he was now, walking along the surface of red water in contentment. He saw the birth of the three sisters, pieced together stitch by stitch in the hands of a white-clad girl, and he saw an endless, empty blue sky. Most clearly of all, he felt the hatred burning in him, the absolute, almost joyful detestation of everything that goddess was and ever would be; an all-consuming desire to destroy what she had made and to reclaim what she had taken from him.

And she was only a little beyond the top of this mountain, just a small distance from the high mouth of this great empty chamber. He knew the way perfectly.

"So, who's next?"

Midna's question hit him like a blow. He raised his eyes and realized they were almost to the open mouth of the mountain. Just a few more minutes of climbing the slopes of dead, dried lava and he would pull himself up into the sight of the sun. "Who's next?" he muttered.

"We've already taken out the big three," she said. "Who possibly could be next?"

"Hylia. The creatrix of all the world," he said. "The mother of the triumvirate and the ultimate causation of every disaster and tragedy in this universe."

"Hylia? Like the lake?" Midna seemed amused. "I did not even know she was a goddess."

"Her faith is an old one, not practiced so much anymore in Hyrule." His smile warped into something of a scowl. "Perhaps the world has outgrown her."

"Well, if she's a forgotten goddess, then she shouldn't be that strong," Midna said.

The hole of light above them grew closer, and Ganondorf stood illuminated in its glow. He tapped his heel against the earth and lifted himself up toward it. "Don't let yourself get cocky. She is an old god, one who has lived and died in many forms, in many eras. Her body is born and reborn time and time again, but her essence hides here, overseeing the process in obscurity." He rose to the light and stepped out onto the windswept surface of the mountain's peak, shielding his eyes against the harsh sun. "While other gods must fortify themselves with worship, Hylia does not need it. She does not demand sacrifices or tributes, as lesser gods do, because she is powerful enough to survive being forgotten. Survive being mortal. You cannot say that about many gods."

"Or many people, for that matter," Midna said, floating up beside him in a flurry of shadow. The wave of darkness that followed her shielded her against the sun, billowing and spreading slowly above her like cloth through water. She seemed comfortable enough in the shadow's protective body—perhaps it would alleviate some of the discomfort that would no doubt visit her during their next journey.

"You might want to tighten that cloak around you," he said, nodding to the darkness that settled, trembling, over her shoulders like a robe. "We're going to walk into the sun."

She laughed, her long fang shining as she widened her lips. "Of course," she said. "Where else are we supposed to go from here?"

He turned away from her and toward the distant orb, spewing fire and white light into the empty air. He knew this land had no need of a sun like that, that this entity was unwarranted, bloated with its own self-importance. Well, he would humble it soon enough.

He raised his hands to the massive sun, bending his fingers and lowering his head. From his mouth poured a flurry of words he did not fully understand—he only followed the instinct of his tongue, the whim of a body that was no longer quite his own. His lips formed the sounds of an ancient language he had never learned, but they came easy to his lips. As he closed his eyes and clenched his fists, something almost tangible slipped into his fingers. He gripped harder and pulled, coaxing a long string of bright light from the blinding sky. The sun's rays met him with resistance, but he twisted his hands, wrapping whips of light around his fingers and spreading his arms, pulling them down from the atmosphere, toward his waist—

And the sky unraveled. It tore down its center like cloth, spilling its contents at his feet—light, sound, scorching flares and cold voids. He watched it pile before him, each component wriggling like a living thing—the tiny bodies of distant stars tumbled over one another like marbles, the dust of nebulae scattered in the gusts of solar wind, flares and spots writhed and deformed in the confused rubble.

From the useless remains of the debris before him rose a shining light—the sun had disappeared from the sky but in its place lingered a door, a tall, empty passage lined with stars. It sat before the white expanse of sky like a black pillar, dotted with the colors and blinks of space. Ganondorf stepped over the rubble at his feet, kicking a particularly hefty star out of his way like a child's ball, and it fell from the edge of the mountain, growing bigger and bigger, swallowing air in its red glow before snuffing out into nothing more than a black speck, shrinking ever smaller as it tumbled toward the endless desert below.

"Okay…" Midna started. "I have no idea what I just saw."

"Hylia's unfinished projects," he answered. He stepped up toward the cosmic door, and reached out a hand to help her over the pile of incomprehensible garbage at their feet. "She throws away more toys than she uses, the spoiled child."

He saw Midna's eyes wander over the pile of cosmic rubble as she floated past it, toward the door. He could not tell if it was in admiration or disgust that her gaze lingered on the planets and stars, the dust and smoke and bodies of unnamed, innumerable objects, born of nothing and devoid of life.

"It's best not to think about it for too long," he said.

"I suppose not." She removed her gaze from the mess and followed him to the tall portal. She lifted her red eyes to its opaque white surface, narrowing them as if she had any hope of peering through. Reluctantly, she took his hand and let him pull her toward the light.

He stepped through, one leg first—the harrowing cold that crept up his skin could not be offset even by the smoke and flames of his body. Next came his face, protected only by the fire of his beard and hair, and then his bare torso. He guided Midna in beside him, took a breath of that freezing, empty air and opened his eyes.

Before him a white path wound almost aimlessly, meandering toward the distant sun through the blue void of space. To each side, stars and planets flickered like guiding lamps, turning and pulsating against the endlessness of creation. Midna floated beside him, eyes wide, black cloak swallowing all light around her, and stared. He smiled at her wonderment, at her hanging jaw, at the way she flinched in surprise when the portal behind them flickered shut. She floated in the almost impossible silence, awestruck and perhaps more than a little fearful that her only company was now Ganondorf, a few billion flickering lights and the thin path forward.

"Well, this is weird," she whispered, voice tearing through the sky like an explosion.

She set her jaw and lowered her eyes to the path of light, following its easy turns into the depths of the furnace in front of them. It might take them seconds to traverse the miles between here and there—it might take millennia. But they had to all the same.

So they started to walk. Their feet made no prints or sounds against the cold light of their walkway, their breathing was so shallow and useless that it was not long that they both discarded the act altogether. Ganondorf did not know if Midna felt the same cold against her skin as he did, or if she merely reveled in it, being the not-quite-woman she was. She just hovered on, taking a moment here and there to marvel at the curiosity of it all.

As they walked on, dark clouds, small and unthreatening, floated about their heads. They seemed formless and indifferent things. They flickered around Midna in silence, perhaps curious at their new visitors. Ganondorf turned over the shapes of them in his head, noting their familiarity—he realized they were the small, voiceless gods of Midna's world. He had not seen them in millennia, so he had forgotten all about them, but he could at least know he had not accidentally crushed them under his feet when he was busy fighting bigger, better gods.

"Huh." Midna's soft voice left her mouth with deafening volume. But the black flickers around her paid no mind to her loudness, they just continued their aimless circling. She raised her eyes to them and sighed. "So you did spare them." She seemed indifferent to the revelation. They probably meant nothing to her at this point, these creatures whom she could now smear under her little finger like insects.

"I wonder if they care what I've done," she said. There were no expressions on the amorphous nebulae—no voice and no movement that would even indicate pleasure or displeasure.

"Perhaps," he whispered—but of course it echoed as a shout. "Perhaps not. Either way, they do not seem interested in reprimanding you for it."

"They don't seem interested in anything," she answered. Maybe that's why they remained small gods, why they had lived so long; because they did not aspire to missteps like Din and Nayru and Farore. They were not world-creators and worship-demanders, they were quiet and innocuous and unambitious—just as anyone would prefer a god.

Midna slipped from under the flitting shadows of the billowing things and continued after him, toward the growing sun (though he could not tell if it burgeoned and spat flares because they were getting closer, or because it was merely inflating itself in anticipation of their arrival).

A few steps and millions of miles later, Midna turned her attention away from their silent, flitting company and back to the scene around them. "I can't say I've ever been in a place this strange," she said.

"Not very many have walked the fields of creation," he said. "Not even many gods or spirits, for that matter."

"And why not?" Midna twirled herself in the void around him, black shadow billowing from her shoulders and swallowing the scene behind her. "It's not a bad hike, if you ask me."

"It is in most everyone's best interest to avoid Hylia," he answered. "She rules these wastes, and misstepping here could mean the end of you."

"You sure did your reading up on the subject."

He lifted his eyes to her, burning with life that had not been his own in the mortal world. "I need not read about what I have lived." He turned his gaze back to the sun, stepping toward its licking flares and pulsating heat. "But it will do you good to pay attention to what comes next. I cannot make any promises, but I have a feeling it will intrigue you."

"I can't imagine it can be any stranger than the things I've already seen," Midna said. "What comes next, I can guess, is that you kill this Hylia the same way you did the others and we all go back to our simple lives."

"Is that what you want?" he asked. "To go back to the way you once were?"

She scratched her cheek and twisted the edge of her mouth, raising her eyes in thought. "Maybe. Maybe not."

"I know you were a queen in your world, but why not a god in this one?" He asked out of genuine curiosity—the only thing predictable about this imp was her caprice.

"It's pretty nice, I'll admit," she said. "Though the Sacred Realm is a little too lifeless for me."

"A god can change that, you know."

"I'm sure she can." Midna tilted her head at him almost like an accusation. "And you? What will you do?"

He grunted. "I will do what suits me."

As the sun grew fat and red before them, swelling, distended, puking flames and light into the sky around them, each returned to the safety of the infinite silence. Midna had covered her eyes and now walked with her head down, focusing only on keeping herself on the path inch by inch, and even Ganondorf, who himself was now made of fire and smoke, could hardly stand to look at the massive thing. He could only count himself fortunate that though it spat flares and unbearable brightness into the world around him, he did not feel its heat—or if he did, it wasn't so hot that he noticed.

He came to a stop before the massive sun, narrowing his eyes in the light. Midna hovered beside him, silent, hood pulled protectively over her head. He could feel the path of light before them slope downward, into the belly of the bloated star, and he knew there were only a few more steps before the dancing flares would swallow them and they would emerge on the other side of its surface, safe from the fire and light.

"How can you stand this?" Midna muttered behind her black cloak.

He did not know if she referred to the brightness or some heat he could not feel. "It is only for a little longer," he said to her. "Endure until then."

He reached over and gripped the edge of her robe, pulling her after him toward the turning, speckled orb of horrible light. It seemed to arc over them, like the jaws of some huge animal—a filter feeder, to which he and Midna were nothing more than specks of a meal. He wondered how many gods this sun had swallowed up, how many it had spat out at the whim of its maker. As the path under him sloped toward its body, he shut his eyes against the light and let his feet carry him forward, toward its bubbling, implacable surface, toward the hungry light and the searing fire he could just now feel burning the bottoms of his feet—

And then there was cool, motionless water. It tickled his skin, soothing against his soles—it smelled of freshness and life and cleanliness. He opened his eyes, and saw the water expand before him, perfectly still, perfectly reflective of the blue sky above it. He could not tell where the clouds under his feet met the clouds over his head, and there was no sound to speak of. Midna floated silently behind him, curling her toes back from the water as if unwilling to touch it.

The only ripples in its infinite surface came from his own feet when he started walking. In every direction, there was nothing but endless sky and water (though which was which seemed a baffling question)—the only object within a thousand miles stood no more than a few dozen paces from him.

A plain throne of light thrusted from the water like a beacon. It was wide and tall, but simple in design—an assortment of featureless rectangles, insubstantial and unadorned. In the throne, small, bare feet dangling well above the surface of the water, sat a tiny girl. She seemed to be enthralled with the activity in her lap—her white hand waved back and forth, slowly, deliberately, drawing a threaded needle to and from the object of her attention. Her glowing yellow hair fell over her face in smooth strands, and every once in a while she would reach up to tuck it again behind her nobly pointed ear. From the corner of her mouth poked a small pink tongue, which wiggled against her lip in concentration. Only when a stray ripple from Ganondorf's footstep kissed the tip of her dangling toe did she lift her head.

He recognized that face, every tiny wrinkle, every glint in those blue eyes and every deceitful flutter of her eyelashes. An uncontrollable loathing bubbled from the depths of his stomach, and he clenched a fist at his side. The other hand reached over to grip the hilt of his sword, but he did not move to attack her. He just let himself seethe at the contemptible simper that played across her lips.

She tilted her head, big blue eyes wide, and put aside her sewing. She rested her needle and thread on one arm of the throne and her project on the other—a simple doll of blue cloth, with two too many arms and eyes of black beads. The goddess' gaze wandered between the faces of her visitors, and she tucked her straight golden hair behind her dainty ears.

"Demise," she said. "It's been a while." Her voice was one he remembered—too old for her body, too self-sure and soft; there was nothing about her he hated more. She had addressed him like this the last time they had been here together, far before he had ever lived life as a man, when she sealed him away using the only method she knew how—through the courageous hands of her pawn. He had fallen to the hero then, but he had been newly-reborn, weakened and far too reliant on the tides of fate. Regardless of his own conceit, which he wore willingly on his sleeve, he had to admit there were lessons a god could learn only through the experiences of a weak, death-haunted mortal.

"Hylia," he growled. It took every effort to keep his own hands from shaking with fury at the very sight of her. How she could sit here and feed off the lives of her incarnations in Hyrule, waiting smugly on that throne, while he rotted in his prison, while his vessel rotted in his, and while her spoiled daughters flitted freely about the realm, constrained only by their own whims—

"I can't say I looked forward to this reunion," she said. She lifted her dainty feet and crossed her legs, leaning an elbow on each knee and laying her chin across her folded fingers. "You brought a friend along. A demon, maybe?"

"Close enough," he answered.

She tilted her head, smile fading. "Were you not content to toy with the Triforce? Were you not content to rule that little plot of land I made for my creatures?"

"Oh, Hylia…" he drew his white sword, placing its tip in the water in front of him and holding it there. "You know I am more ambitious than that." From the deepest shadows of the infinite water beneath him, he heard the breath of his own realm, that of darkness and fire—it came crawling toward the tip of his sword, familiar, eager to please. "You think me simple-minded and indolent. You give this body no more credit than you would a mortal man." When she narrowed her eyes, a spark of joy flooded from the bottoms of his feet to the tip of his head, but he could not tell if that was just the darkness returning to him, the power the waters of creation had held hostage for millennia. "But he has awoken himself; he has crawled from the lowest hole in the emptiest desert and fulfilled his highest potential." The blackness beneath him touched the tip of his sword, banishing its sagely light, running up the blade and rushing into his hand with a familiar prickling sensation. "What can we say of your vessel? Your favorite doll, the one you spoil and shower with riches—she was born into power, and yet died like a lowly beetle stuck on the end of a child's pin."

The pout on Hylia's face made his heart soar. He lifted his sword from the water and let it rest by his side, glowing black and ringing with familiar power. He had been getting tired of that toy of the sages, the pen knife they called a sword.

"Are you here to taunt me?" the little girl asked. "You've already done everything else. You've invaded my realm, you've turned my water black—" she gestured at the motionless sea around them, now graying and glowing red with his hatred— "and you've wrecked my daughters. Although I can remake them. I can sew as many as you can tear apart, and just as fast."

"I'm not here to taunt you." He gripped his sword and raised it toward her, blade glowing with expectancy. The sword and its contents rang in his head like a bell, telling him to cut her down where she sat, before she could rise to defend herself.

"You little fool," the goddess hissed, yellow brows drawing over her shining eyes. "Our struggle is eternal. Killing me is killing yourself."

He smiled. "Of course a child would resort to a scare tactic like that." She clenched her jaw and stood, little toes curling at the end of her plain seat. She bore her teeth—white, round, ugly like a child's—he half expected one to fall out and for her to call off the fight to slip it under her pillow.

But that was the man's experience with children—the god's experience had been that there was only one child, and that was Hylia—older than all others (besides himself), and far more powerful.

"I'm a man who can gamble," he told her. "I am a man with an open mind, willing to try new ideas. And a realm without Hylia is my favorite new idea." The little girl rose from her chair, feet lifting from the seat, cheeks reddening with anger. He could not help but smile at the look on her face, the way she clenched her tiny jaw and ground her round teeth against one another. "Even if to end you means I end myself, I will welcome it." He realized he was not even lying.

"You are a toy that has long outworn your use," she hissed. She raised her tiny hand and in it a sword of light appeared, straight and thin and nimble like a needle. "It is time to put you away again."

He lifted his own blade and stared down the edge of its length at her, at the reflection of her indignant light in the blackened metal. He did not need to say anything more. With a tiny grunt and a flash of white teeth, the little girl leapt from her throne, twisting her body and screaming, needle-first, straight at him.


	11. Hylia

The moment the goddess moved, a prickling, violent wind tore past Midna, threatening to sweep her by her robe to be forever lost in the infinite sky-sea. But in the next instant, before she could fully comprehend what was happening, she was falling. She slipped downward, dragged by some unseen force through the clear surface of water she had easily walked across seconds ago. She fell past the paper-thin meniscus of the strange ocean (or else had fallen upward into the sky, she could not really tell), and now, though she had no reason or need to breathe, felt herself biting her lip and tightening her lungs. Above her (and, as she lowered her eyes past her dangling feet, far below), beyond a thin veil of water that she could not pierce or even touch, the two gods fought. She did not know which had sent her beneath the surface, had brushed her out of the way like an unwanted obstacle, but she had no other option than to watch the battle through the clear glass of water.

One side of her wanted to swim toward it, to raise a long, pointed finger and at least try to pierce its surface, but another, smarter side of her knew she had no part in this battle, that this scuffle was one between entities far older and far more spiteful than she could ever be. So she raised her eyes against her flawless looking glass and watched the two go at it.

It was almost impossible to follow. Hylia's tiny sword was a blur of light, blinding in its intensity and utterly insane in its motion. It flitted around Ganondorf—or Demise, or whatever he was—bearing down on him from all sides seemingly at once. But he raised his own sword to meet it, twisting his body out of its way, throwing up waves behind him. When she landed a blow against his raised sword, he slid along the surface, heels digging against it like solid ground. Bursts of steam billowed from his feet—the effort of the fight sent droplets of heated water into the air, where they hovered, timeless, as the two gods fought around them.

Midna could not keep track of which sword struck where—it all seemed to her an impenetrable blur of light and dark, of fire and flying gold hair. She could only make out the confusing billowing of smoke, and occasionally a limb flying to stave off an impossibly fast strike. An energized darkness crept from the pair outward, staining the already dark water, filling the sky with red. Somewhere far beyond them, a streak of lightning lit up the angry black clouds.

 _Well, I've got to hand it to them, they sure know how to lay on the drama._ Midna crossed her legs and leaned back on her pillows of shadow. She narrowed her eyes at the spectacle, struggling to follow the movements of god and goddess as they twisted around one another, fire and light sparking off them whenever their blades met. In some flash of movement Midna could not follow, Ganondorf managed to land a blow to her torso—or at least, it seemed to her he might've—and she backed off, twisting her needle in her hand, grimace widening.

She started toward her adversary, one leg bent, the other extended straight behind her, and her toe kicked up a wave of water as she rushed toward him, simple white dress flying. She split the water behind her in a spray of white foam, and she threw herself at Ganondorf, massive gray wave looming in her wake. Midna half expected him to meet that wave head-on, sword raised, but he just threw himself back, feet sliding across the surface and kicking up his own spray of black water.

They chased each other across the infinite expanse of sea and sky like two flitting lights, dancing through air and water. They circled one another in a flurry of droplets and billowing clouds, before meeting in a storm of blows, and separating again to resume the chase. The water's surface rolled tumultuously, the clouds swirled opaque and black, but the two gods did not seem to notice or care; they just flew across the expanse of darkness, pinpricks of color against the thunderous sky.

She wondered for a second how she had gotten here—watching through the mist and waters of creation itself the conclusion of a battle that had raged for centuries without her knowledge. She had to admit she had no idea what to expect when she'd embarked on this bizarre journey—all she knew as that to save the lives of Link and her people, she had to open a door for this madman to step into the Sacred Realm. She supposed she should've known it would've come to this—that she would have to sit here and endure the oldest battle ever fought, the oldest to never have been won or lost. It was just her luck.

The Midna she had been would've been terrified, concerned only with returning to Link and the ravaged kingdom of Hyrule, concerned only with righting the wrongs done to him and his people. But the Midna she had become, this formless, shadow-choked thing, was nothing but intrigued. Either way the tides of the fight turned, the victor still might grant her passage back to her own world, might restore Hyrule and Link to her, might let her go home if she wished, or let her stay within the borders of the Sacred Realm. But considering her history of deicide, she supposed she had a better chance of that happening if one particular god triumphed over the other.

Her fists clenched when the needle of Hylia's sword struck him in his shoulder, twisting deeply. A billow of blood and steam poured from the wound, and he threw back his head (she could hardly recognize his face now—how quickly he had changed in the course of half a battle) as he twisted toward the water once more. He fell from the sky in a streak of smoke and flame, and when his feet hit the water, a wavy tremor ran through the ocean as it would earth. Hylia barreled down on top of him, thin sword first, dress and hair flying behind her. He raised his blade to meet hers, and a rush of energy flew from the impact of their metal, stilling the motion of storm and water, freezing droplets in the gray air. They stood locked in the exchange for what seemed to Midna like an eternity, but in a mighty roar and a ripple of his black arms, he pushed the goddess off him. She flew into the air, flailing for a second before regaining her balance and composure. She floated down toward the water, dainty white feet dangling well above its angry surface, and Midna could see a smile on her lovely face.

"Even the Triforce has not made you a worthy opponent," she said. Her eyes flashed blue in the lightning, and a single wrinkle at the edge of her mouth betrayed her consternation.

"Perhaps not," he replied. He let his sword rest by his side and raised his free hand, summoning the golden light. "But I haven't used it yet." He closed his fingers around it and rushed for her, smiling at the look on her face, the quick raising of her eyebrows, the widening of her eyes—

The Triforce's light swept out in all directions from between his fingers, and when he thrust it toward her, she did not have time to pull away, to escape the encroaching power. She raised her needle-like sword just in time to thrust it through Demise's extended arm, but that did not stop him. Blade in one hand, Triforce in the other, he rushed her, and she fell back into the water. He followed, and the world reversed itself—they came tumbling back out into air on the other side, Hylia first, squirming and slashing at him with her blade, and he second, pouring steam and smoke from his scaled body. The water and clouds seemed to part for them as they struggled, skittering across the surface in a tangle of light and darkness.

Midna could barely see what was happening—all she could make out were the flashes of blades, the flicker of fire and smoke, the glint of golden hair. She thought she heard a whine, like the high-pitched wailing of metal on metal, like the screech of some animal, but when she saw Hylia's mouth widen, when she saw the bright blue of terrified eyes, she knew it was her scream. The girl raised her needle once more, but Demise's blade met it, swiping it from her grip. It rotated in the air and pierced the water soundlessly, floating down (or up, or neither) into the bodies of water and sky, swallowed by darkness.

With her adversary's gold-lit hand closed around her throat, she lifted her own delicate white fingers to pry him from her, but he held fast. A golden haze poured from them both, enveloping them, mixing with the smoke and water. It rose, intense light drowning out their bent shapes, rising to the sky in a pillar of white.

Midna thought she heard the crack of metal. She thought she could see a fissure run along the side of a triangle before her, and she felt the life of that weird entity, the life of Hylia, spring from the depths of it. She could see the Triforce break, feel its power rush from its golden body into Hylia, tearing her consciousness from her—

Then there was nothing. Demise stood alone, sword at his side, hand empty. The light had disappeared entirely, and Hylia with it. She had left no sign, no corpse; perhaps, unlike her daughters, she could not die, merely suffer temporary erasure. The water calmed, the dark clouds settled into composure, the lightning retreated into the distance. Again Midna felt the pull of some magic, some guiding force that led her up from the water, down from the sky, again to his side. She looked at her own deformed reflection in the rippling red water, before raising her eyes to the only piece of Hylia that remained—her throne. It was still light, still bright and simple, seemingly untouched by the chaos around it; even the doll on its arm rested undisturbed.

When Demise stepped toward it, he left no ripples in the dark water. He looked it over once, frowning, before seating himself. He leaned back, crossed his legs and rested one arm over the doll, crushing it under his elbow. From his loosely balled fist fell shimmering gold dust—he waved his hand and summoned a wind to carry it away, off into the infinite waters of creation. Midna watched the tiny shards of what remained of the Triforce blow away before lifting her eyes to his face—a face she could barely recognize as mortal, much less as Ganondorf's. Fear suddenly gripped her, but she smiled anyway, displayed that wide, dishonest grin that had borne her through life, when she was still living.

"Well," she said. "That was interesting."

Demise shifted on Hylia's throne, cupping his chin and frowning.

 _He's going to destroy me now_ , Midna admitted to herself. _Now that I've worn out my usefulness._

"You have served me well," he said. With a start she realized she could not quite recognize his voice, either.

 _Here it comes_ , she thought.

"You are dismissed." He waved her away, concerned only, it seemed, with sitting.

But she didn't leave. She stood before him in confusion, running a toe through the black water. "Oh."

"You're off to Hyrule, are you not?" He seemed almost amicable. She thought she might be able to recognize something that resembled a smile on that weird face of his.

"Yes." She paused. "You're not? What happened to me being your interdimensional doorstop?"

"I admit I've been fighting with myself about returning there for a while now," he answered. He rested his chin on one scaly hand. "But this throne is just so comfortable. Much more than the one in Hyrule."

Midna bowed her head. "Very well." She turned to go, though she had no idea where she might possibly go from here.

She stopped when he called her name. "I suppose a benevolent god leaves no good deed unpunished. You have proven yourself favorable, and for that I will favor you. Your wish is granted. Hyrule is as I left it, and always will be. Your boy is awake. He's waiting for you."

"My…" her brow wrinkled curiously, but she said no more.

"Remember this, Midna. Do not overstep your bounds. I have given you a gift, so do not waste it."

She stared at him, trying to figure out exactly what had shifted in his mind, trying to get a clear picture of exactly what he'd become. But she knew she never would—she could only hope that the favor she'd garnered with him would last. He might not even care about Hyrule anymore, about any living world again; he had other lands to rule, other universes to play with.

She just nodded; she didn't know what else to do.

"Take care not to lose yourself on the way back." He smiled one last time, pointed teeth glinting almost silver in the cloudy light. With a wave of his hand and a glint of his red eyes, she disappeared, swept up in a flurry of light and darkness. The water around her vanished, the throne and the demon god sitting on it blurred into nonexistence.

When she regained her footing, she could see nothing around her but an endless expanse of white. She lifted her head to the sourceless light, to the tiny grey line in the distance where the featureless land met the featureless sky, and sighed. She felt her shoulders slump, her muscles relax, she felt the dread leave her body as the quietness of the place set in.

She had done it. She had ensured Link's survival and that of her own people—that is, if Demise had not betrayed her. As she gathered herself and took a deep breath, she thought of the Hylian's expectant face, the familiar grasses and skies of his homeland, and the deep, warm shadows of her own.

 _What business is it of mine what Demise does with his own realm?_ she asked herself. _If my lands are safe, then I will be content. But if they are not, then…_

She did not think it wise to consider the scenario, while she was still in the Sacred Realm, where he might overhear her thoughts. So she brushed back a stray shadow from her face, steeled herself, and took the first step toward home.

* * *

She found Link in the palace garden, pale back knotted in effort, as he brought down the axe. The wood before him split in two, and he bent to gather both pieces. He had discarded his hero's clothes and now wore baggy trousers of Ordish style. His bare feet dug into the earth as he placed another piece of wood onto the stump of a royal tree.

When she spoke his name, he whirled around, clutching his axe in one unsteady hand. His eyes met hers, and widened, and for a second she feared that he would not recognize her in her new form. But when his jaw dropped, when the axe slipped from his fingers and he stumbled toward her, letting loose a cry of desperation, she knew he had seen the familiar features in her face, her body—though it was so much different than how he'd known her as an imp.

He fell into her arms as a child might, all limp limbs and stuttering tears. She wrapped him in her arms, holding him upright and burying her face in his too-long hair. She ran a hand down his back and let him squeeze her, releasing noises of alternating joy and despair.

"Midna," he whispered. "I didn't think… you were alive. I was so—"

"It's okay," she said. She rested her lips against his forehead before cupping his face and looking into his eyes, into the earnest, endless blue. "It's okay now. Here I am, here you are."

"I…" He gave her the smile she'd been waiting for, though at its edges it was tainted with more than a little distress.

"What happened?" she asked. She looked behind him at what appeared to be a small garden—Ordish pumpkins, winter vegetables and a few struggling beans crawled from a tilled patch of earth. It appeared he had cut down more than a few sacred palace oaks.

"You were gone, and she was gone," he started. He spoke reservedly, as if unsure of his own words. "And I woke up. But I don't really remember that much… I couldn't get out of the palace—" he motioned to the barrier of twilight still hovering above them. "And no one could get in. I ate all the food stored in the pantry and kitchen." Here, he stopped. He was blinking too rapidly, and there was a movement behind his eyes that told her he might've not been entirely aware of himself, that clarity had fled him for just a moment. "I killed her, Midna. I… should've… a braver man would've taken justice out on himself, but I couldn't." She drew him again into her arms, running soothing fingers through his hair. She comforted him until he gathered enough strength to speak again. "So I tried to live here as best I could. I cleared the pantry and kitchen, and I grew this." He motioned to the garden. "Not much sun gets through that barrier up there. I had to grow pumpkins, mostly."

Midna narrowed her eyes. "How long has it been like this?" she asked.

"A season and a half. None of the guards could get through, they tried burning, drilling, everything. But the most I could tell them through the barrier was that I didn't know what happened. I didn't tell them that it was my fault that—"

Midna stopped him there with a finger to his lips. "Don't say anything," she said. She thought of Demise's promise, about how he had taken care to leave Hyrule untouched, for her. Perhaps he was content to rule it from afar, to shape it the way he saw fit, but he had deigned to let her have this one victory. "She's not dead," she told him. The lie almost hurt coming out of her mouth—she had not expected her heart to yearn for the truth of it, but she had just returned from the Sacred Realm into her own mortal, physical body—the same one she had entered it with. It was bound to have a few lingering resentments and regrets.

Link's eyes brightened at the statement. "How—"

"It's a long story," she said. "After you hit your head, we took our fight to the Sacred Realm. Ganondorf died there. We've nothing to fear from him anymore." It was a true enough proclamation—there was indeed no longer a Ganondorf to speak of, not in this world nor any other. "Zelda is... sealed away. I saw her, she…" The gears in her mind turned, and she told herself to think of something, of anything, that would lift the sorrow from his face. "She is trapped in the space between your world and mine. Surely you've noticed that the two are merging."

He nodded. "I saw it from the tower."

"We might be able to free her, if we manage to separate them." _Good little imp,_ she said to herself. It was a voice she'd had back in the Sacred Realm, the remnants of the heartless spirit she had become under those weird, featureless skies. _Lie to him, and lie well_.

"How do we do that?" he asked.

"I don't know. But I know we can find out." She reached down and took his hand in hers, felt that familiar warmth, the curl of his fingers in her palm.

To her dismay, his smile fell. "How are we going to get out of here, though? The barrier's been up for so long…"

Midna raised her eyes to the sky and for the last time in her life, sent up a prayer. A few seconds later (he would like to delay, wouldn't he, just to mess with her), the barrier disappeared, and again the blue Lanayru sky passed above them.

"How did you—" Link started.

"Come on," she said, gripping him and calling the old magic of her land to carry them from the palace garden (it was so infuriatingly _weak_ compared to the magic she had gotten used to in the Sacred Realm). She led Link, as she always had, through the narrow flights of darkness, across the compressed space of the ether, and appeared on a hill far outside the city. Her feet touched soft grass, the breeze flowed through her hair and robes, and his hand was warm in hers. She looked over at him, at the way he blinked perhaps a little too often, the small, silent stutters at his lip, at the pale sadness that may not leave his features anytime soon, and knew that wishes were limited. But she leaned over an kissed his cheek anyway, and he reddened at the touch.

"What… what happened to you, anyway?" he said, as she led him from the hill, away from the sight of Castletown. "You're different… and I mean not just the b-body."

"I don't really know," she said, and realized there was more than a little truth to the statement. It all seemed a dream now, far away and occurring in a different person's life. But remnants of that person still lingered inside her; the frustration at the weakness of her mortal magic, the knowledge of the Sacred Realm and the demon king that sat at its head, the feeling of shadows like silk darting around her, perfectly bendable to her whim. "Time passes differently in the Sacred Realm. I think I became a god for a little while. Or else just went mad."

"Maybe both," he suggested, and she knew it was true. "You're going to have to explain it to me when you have the time."

"When we have the time."

She smiled as she led him away from Castletown and toward the pale pillars of Twilight rising from the Hyrulean landscape. They appeared two shadows against the distant glow, lit with light and love and the promise of constancy. Before them loomed their next, and last, adventure, and Midna could not help her selfish heart from fluttering in her throat.

 _And so we begin again_ , she said to herself. The joy that rose in her heart was heavy, almost painful. But she still strode toward the horizon, and the infinite and eternal challenge rose in turn to meet them. And this time, he would stay with her, he would ride with her along the edge of the world, beating back the darkness, always one step away from completion, always one day before the end of their journey together.

They would flit across the uncharted stretches where the two worlds touched, fingers entwined like the creeping lands of their adjacent countries. They would rise to put down new challenges where old ones lay vanquished, with the surety of their own righteousness to guide them as they unraveled infinite pieces of an infinite problem, securing one victory after another. And when Link's smile would fade, when he would hover close to despair at the endlessness of their journey, she would take him in her arms and kiss him, assuring him that they were as they should be, weaving a spell of contentedness over him until he forgot, until his mind clouded enough to hide his own doubt. They would live life as it had been, unconcerned with whatever a dark god did with the distant expanses of his own land, a land they could no longer touch or have any power over. They would feast on the fruits of their own worlds, fill their bellies with the love and life of this eternal moment, of their righteous and wonderful struggle, as they beat back the advance of chaos, forever.


End file.
